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I don’t know that the breakup of Canada is inevitable. I don’t think Canada is a “real country” and it basically exists at America’s convenience, but it is convenient. America doesn’t want to have to deal with Quebec, native rights, Ontario, or maintaining the vast Arctic expanses.
The way I see it America needs Canada to do the following:
Canada needs to provide America preferential access to its vast natural resources (those known and those that will be discovered)
Canada needs to not become a proxy for foreign powers or terrorists (Tamil Tigers, Chinese auto dumping, etc.) (This includes patrolling the Arctic)
Canada needs not to threaten America in its own right (talk of turning off energy, for instance)
Besides that, what do we need Canada for? They can maintain a separate legal system, they can deal with bi-lingualism, they can criticize us at the UN and accept our help when diplomats need to be extracted in a crisis. There are even some advantages in this arrangement. Nobody really wants to go to war for Canada.
I’ve even been thinking that Canada """joining""" the EU can be face-saving for everybody in many ways. The EU is already essentially an American client, Canada joining it is like your child running away from home by hiding in his sister’s room. Trump is thinking differently but I can imagine some formulation that makes everybody happy.
(To be clear I think the EU project is majority unlikely.)
Re: Canada and the EU, I have no idea what the hell von der Leyen is doing there (and I don't think she does either). We already have countries in Europe that don't want to be part of the EU, why are we going outside with some kind of associate partnership nonsense? This is like having Australia in the Eurovision. I don't know why either, apart from they have a big TV audience who watch it.
Maybe it's a straight swap: Greenland left the EU in 1982 and is now going with America, so maybe we get Canada in (belated) exchange?
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Actually joining the EU in any meaningful way would absolutely lead directly to a breakup (or at least some sort of splintering) of the nation -- the US might like this of course!
While all the boomers will of course say in context of the current environment that they love Europe, (the comparison to the US is implicit) so far as I can tell the ruling class of the EU is basically Trudeau on steroids -- and that approach is enough to splinter off at least the West in the medium term.
Probably the non-GTA parts of Ontario too -- Quebec would probably be on board, and the Maritimes will vote for whomever sends them the best gibs (although both are capable of becoming riled over seemingly inconsequential things, so who knows) -- I'm not sure what the country would look like ten years hence, but it would not be the same.
Ironically Carney is probably looking for some sort of non-deal that will allow him to claim victory, similar to what Trump seems to be doing in the case of Greenland -- so I agree that anything substantive is unlikely to happen; he runs the risk of summoning that which he can't put down though.
I think this is an accurate take. It's possible that Canada and EU will sign some sort of fake deal that does nothing except affirm that the Orange Man is indeed bad.
The EU, of course, would love to take Canada's natural resources and give them some hostile MENA immigrants in return. I think Carney's too smart to let that happen.
From a perspective of what's best for Canada, they should just give the US whatever it wants, deregulate, shut the border, and watch GDP per capita soar to a level above that of the United States. Their relative poverty is only due to a weakness of spirit. Based on natural resources and human capital, there is no reason for them to be so poor. But at least we're not Americans, eh?
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