Why Canada Should Join the EU
economist.com
economist.com
I really wonder what the author meant with this line. There's very few populations in Europe that bear any similarity whatsoever with the relationship between First Nations people and most Canadians, since most populations in Europe have created their own states. And the few tribal populations in Northern Europe generally were and certainly are today treated at least as fairly as anything in Canada. So who are they talking about? Would the Basques feel that they would be treated better as First Nations people in Canada than they are today in Spain?
Note that the treatment of immigrants is a completely separate topic in the article, so I don't think they could be referring to, say, the treatment of Syrian refugees with that sentence above.
Still comparison to First Nations seems off. Maybe it's about this: Disadvantaged ethnic groups such as Romani or Jews (particularly post-Soviet Jews in recent times) are often denied a connection to the nation state or (what you might call) the shared European cultural heritage. In contrast, I don't think anyone argues that First Nations aren't true Canadians.
We also have lost much to history. Take a look at the shuffling that happened during https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period
I also have no idea whatsoever what 1500 year old history has to do with anything. None of the cultures of that time exist today in any meaningful sense. Even the Italians or Greeks of today are not the Romans and Greeks of 300 CE, they are vastly different cultures and speak unintelligibly different languages.
Should different Slovak communities in the Czech Republic have their own lands and make their own laws? What if they're living in the same village as Czechs, how will they split the territory there?
There is simply no valid comparison between how populations in Europe live and have developed up to today, and how things sit in Canada with the First Nations.
And note, the Basque country in Spain is already an autonomous region with significant ability to do its own governance. The Basques there have been practicing their own traditions and using their own language since the fascist dictatorship fell. The Catalans of Catalunya (one of the richest regions of Spain, mind you) also speak their own language and are not in any other way culturally suppressed, again, since the fascist dictatorship fell. The reason for their struggle for independence is mostly their perception that they are being dragged down economically by the poorer parts of Spain (i.e. the strictly Spanish-speaking South).
We do have our own indigenous minority who are treated badly by society - Irish travellers. There's a lot of racism in Irish society towards them, and we could do with looking at how other countries treat minorities, indigenous or not, and recognize for all that we like to harp on about our own poor treatment in history, we are doing exactly the same here towards travellers.
Really? The Sami populations don't have any sovereignty that I know of.
Maybe the Irish, who were genocided by the English up into the 20th century.
I personally very much disagree with the concept that First Nations people in Canada are afforded more rights and are freer to practice their cultural identity than the Scots, Welsh, and Irish in the UK in 2024.
If anything they had a much bigger part oppressing the highlanders than the English.
The U.S. suffers greatly from the demise of federalism and it’s insane that anybody would want to copy it. People in both California and Alabama would be a lot happier if they didn’t have to care about what each other were doing except to coordinate national defense and foreign treaties.
Look at the Scandinavian countries. Look how effectively they have been able to implement major policy reforms because their electorates aren’t divided along dozens of cleavage lines.
And this whole article is nonsense because literally no politician anywhere, in Canada or the EU, has suggested this union...
That is largely because the right has split into populist right and centre-right parties though.
Opinion polls already have Labour and Cons at an even tie with Reform UK doubling their overall popularity in just 6 months.
All this to say I wouldn't want to suggest that the trend towards nationalist politics ended with a Labour majority but rather that the Conservative Party wasn't sufficiently nationalist enough to entice public sentiments away from Reform UK
That’s what I meant when I said nationalists have rendered ruling parties impotent even when they can’t outright win the election. Similar things have happened in Germany and France. In Germany, it took the right splitting and a stoplight coalition of greens, neoliberals, and socialists to cobble together a majority. In France, it took a coalition of communists, socialists, and centrists. It’s hard to actually govern when the winning side has little in common other than opposition to nationalism.
And any leftist/centrist coalition is fragile, relying on infighting among the right. If Tories became a strongly nationalist, anti-immigration party, they could probably win. Same thing for CDU. That’s already happened in the U.S. GOP.
Just what the EU needs! We don't have enough loss of buying power yet, let's accelerate that some more until we're the third world asap.
Clearly the author is ignorant. Canadians are sick of immigration. Young Canadians doubly so. Racism is becoming more acceptable by the day.
We have essentially imported an entire massive underclass to run all our fast food restaurants and other such jobs.
> Europeans could learn from Canada how to allow immigration in a fashion that the population embraces rather than tolerates, though a housing crunch has frayed that consensus of late.
Far from sounding ignorant, the author sounds well-informed.
The only place where immigration worked I can think of was the USA, in the old times.
The recipe for successful immigration is very simple: no benefits, import only people with some money and with skilled jobs qualifications, hard stance against illegal immigration.
Anything else is a recipe for disaster.
Our GDP per capita has gone down every quarter for what, at least 2 years?
Medical care, cost of living, everything is the worst I've experienced in my lifetime. When I was in university our dollar and average income were both higher than the US', now our dollar is at 70 cents USD and our average income is 40% lower...
https://archive.is/UdixF/ec46ebf7fe812cd5e9432f45f68bd142e6c...
BC's GDP per capita is lower than Idahos. Ontario and Quebec's are lower than West Virginia's.
https://brilliantmaps.com/us-vs-canada-gdp-per-capita/
This would be unthinkable not too long ago.
In the EU, of course, everyone is against anglophones.
“I really like coming back to [jmb99’s hometown], it’s all white people. Nice change from Toronto.”
Definitely a common sentiment.
i think canada have the potential to receive far more immigrant (and i think it should, to realize its full potentiel)
but little is being done to help with their integration, two thins should be done
1. build more home
2. support startups and small businessesCanadians are suffering due to decades on decades of poor housing policy and a continued reluctance to seriously engage in the problem. Suddenly immigrants are to blame.
Never mind the fact that long ago, before this government even touched immigration numbers, or were even elected, Toronto and Vancouver were already experiencing housing crises of high prices and severe shortage.
Leaving the social issues aside, this was very poorly planned and average Canadians, especially young ones are feeling the pressure as a direct result of these policies.
Of course there are other factors but to argue that this is "sudden" and misplaced is not genuine.
How did they even manage to end up in a housing crisis?
Is it racism if all Canadians en masse, just up and moved to, e.g., El Salvador and totally swamped their culture and wrecked their identify and then started abusing them in their own homes?
Why is it always only the trigger word “racism” when people complain about abuses, but it’s not “racism” when the abusers abuse the victims, the local indigenous population that is being assaulted and abused?
Presumably a bunch of Canadians would leave Canada in favor of higher US salaries, or cheaper housing. The idea that Toronto real estate pricing is so geographically close to Buffalo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh is interesting.
Then again, presumably a bunch of people looking for affordable healthcare would be moving up to Canada.
Or perhaps not all that many people would go anywhere permanently and they would just have an easier time going on vacation in either direction.
Every Canadian I know who emigrated there is sick of immigration.
And no. That's not a joke (i.e. they want do say that) but a bit of irony.
I binged watched a bunch of videos on Europe's various countries' backlash to immigration. An example was a Sweden reversal of attitude on immigration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmBOqfxPc90
Maybe the statistics in that video was cherry-picked and distorting reality. I haven't been to Sweden in 20 years to know the facts on the ground. Either way, the comments on that video are interesting.
I remember thinking 8 years ago that Trump's rhetoric of "build a wall" was insane. But now seeing the negative attitudes in every country that accepted a mass influx of immigration, it turns out he brilliantly tapped into a frustration that no other high-profile politician running for President was brave enough to say bluntly. It helped him win the election.
Humanity will just have to relearn the lessons of the 1920s-1940s again, if it learns anything at all that is.
If this wasn't bad enough, Canada has the 1st world's most regressive housing system. This double whammy has made it impossible for Canada's millennials to buy houses, while boomers and gen-Xers get free asset appreciation and cheap labor. It's geriatric wealth transfer at the expense of this generation of Canadians.
Canada should join the EU, because both entities have spent decades taking bureaucracy-led self-destructive actions in the name of faux diversity & expert-led consensus.
Sounds pretty racist to me. Maybe you can be clearer on what you mean by non-racist remigration? The far-right groups, which are, at least in my country (Germany), the only once using the term to my knowledge, clearly mean it in a racist way.
Always has been. Well at least in my experience in online gaming with a small portion of French Canadians.
If you are in Canada and you have a problem with immigration, uhhh.. sorry, but you might want to figure out how to accept it.
"According to the 2021 Canadian census, immigrants in Canada number 8.3 million persons and make up approximately 23 percent of Canada's total population. This represents the eighth-largest immigrant population in the world, while the proportion represents one of the highest ratios for industrialized Western countries" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Canada
FYI, an extremely well-funded lobby group wants to bump Canada's population to 100 million by the year 2100: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative
Similar situation in Australia and US. And most of it misplaced.
One major issue is trying to buy a first home where the blame goes towards immigrants. Instead of towards older generations where the problem really lies. They apply political power across multiple levels of government to affect everything from planning, taxation, inheritance which systemically prevent young people getting into the market.
Likewise upwards mobility and income inequality gets blamed on immigrants instead of the wealthy.
I've seen that tactic to try to discredit real, valid concerns with immigration, either by lumping it with racism (which definitely exists, but is not the only argument against unfettered immigration), or by pretending something else is the problem (something else may also be a problem, but that doesn't make the problems that people are worried about with high levels of immigration invalid).
In my understanding, the backlash against immigration in Canada is relatively recent, and it's basically caused by the fact that Canada took in a huge number of immigrants, historically speaking, in recent years. This results in:
1. People feeling likes many immigrant communities are creating enclaves instead of adopting the culture of Canada. 2. Many recent immigrants are unskilled, resulting in a larger burden on provincial-based social services.
When you couple that with astronomical housing prices and a stagnant economy with rising unemployment where many people see less opportunity, it's not hard to see why citizens are demanding lower rates of immigration.
One study found that something like 70% of the cost of owning a home in Sydney comes from zoning and land release issues. That is, a bit of reform in zoning laws and a heap of land being released could see a 1 million dollar home being available for 300k.
That said, so much of australias economy is based on the false premise that housing is a stable long term investment. If you dropped housing on its face you would probably bankrupt the country for a generation. That said, better now than later.
I'm all for the YIMBY and zoning reform push, but a) that's decided on the municipal level, b) change is slow, c) immigration rates can drastically change in very little time, if the feds decide. In Canada feds wanted to have their cake and eat it too: the population grew by over 3% in a year, but infrastructure at the provincial level (e.g. healthcare) didn't budge, and housing isn't building much faster than it was before.
If we understand that the key factor behind housing affordability is inelasticity of supply, then it should be easy to intuit that other things can be inelastic: policy and the law. By contrast, immigration rate might as well be a push of a button. It's not responsible to jack up the rate first and keep it that way just because it's not "the-thing-that-ought-to-change".
There are of course other externalities with high immigration rates (for contrast, US immigration rate is not that high), and the downsides to low immigration are overstated. Older generations won't live forever, but what I generally see is a call for unnecessary wealth transfer from young generation to old. Boomers are the wealthiest demographic already. We don't need to give them more freebies.
It’s not that strange as one of the political parties basically explicitly protects business interests and oh boy did they profit. It’s political nihilism.
Immigration keeps salaries low which is great for companies bad for young people.
Immigrants of a similar age want the same type of housing. Young people starting out cannot afford their parents home. They compete for the same resources. Older generations are least affected.
Unless your claim is that "supply and demand" is somehow irrelevant, the immigration rate is a knob that can be dialed down to reduce the severity of the problem. It's one of the easiest knobs to adjust too.
That's why people are frustrated, and understandably so.
Canada's immigration policy is on the whole highly selective, focused on skilled immigrants. The largest category of immigrants is professionals. Immigration laws are enforced and illegal immigration is relatively low. Refugees are admitted, but the government retains control over the numbers, the source countries, which individuals get chosen, etc.
In 2015–2016, Germany admitted close to one million Syrian refugees. Over the same period, Canada took 44,000 of them. There is a never-ending stream of unauthorised arrivals (some genuine refugees, many economic migrants–it can be difficult to distinguish them) crossing the Mediterranean.
The biggest complaint about immigration in Canada is that it is contributing to an overheated property market, locking many younger Canadians out of owning their own home.
But the majority of immigrants to Canada are well-off, educated – so unlikely to get involved in social problems like crime or terrorism, and they tend to integrate well with mainstream society. There are some poorer and disadvantaged immigrant groups who are more likely to experience those problems, but their numbers are smaller. Compare to Europe where the number of poor / poorly educated / socially deprived immigrants is much larger.
So while both Canada and Europe may have some problems with immigration, they are rather different problems.
Was. At present nearly every min wage and gig economy position in the country is 99% early 20s males from India taking advantage of being able to enrol in a diploma mill to qualify for PR. The Feds knew of this shady pipeline for years and did nothing because it juiced GDP numbers that otherwise would have revealed a recession.
Even once reputable colleges/universities couldn’t resist starting part-time no-show “hospitality” programs with 0 work and 100% pass rate to siphon tuition as the table stakes for being able to circumvent other immigration streams.
Five million of them.
The only reason I see why it is that way is when other Canadians restrict the supply of real estate (NIMBY) to inflate their own property value. Same for most other democratic real estate markets in the world in the past years, not just Canada, regardless of immigration levels.
He takes a simple observation and generalizes it instead of working backwards to the fact that Canada is just like the US geographically highly isolated with giant oceans on each side whereas Germany and Europe are a landmass directly connected to other continents.
I highly recommend the books "Prisoners of Geography" (1/2) for anyone interested in realizing how geography silently shapes politics.
This seems to be very out of sync with the opinions of the Canadians I know, and the recent public issues with heavy immigration of unskilled males from the Punjab.
Sentiment against immigration is real in Canada. You're comparing refugee numbers when in reality Canada's population grew faster than most of the G7 in 2023 [1]
[1] - https://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/about/economics/economics-p...
Not Germany, Merkel. Merkel Incentivized and allowed admitting refugees at an unprecedented rate.
Wired: greenland should pacman defence[1] the USA
I miss the wired/tired/expired lists greatly. Wired from 2000-2010 was a high-quality publication.
Of course it will never happen for a multitude of reasons
Expired: Wired subscription
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Free_Trade_Associatio...
I was once young and had romantic notions of living in Europe, but I realized that I cultivated those notions as a student, tourist and urbanist. The realities of living in Europe are more complicated. I can still deal with the downsides (would still love to live in London), but as I've moved around and lived in more places, I realized it's not incontrovertibly true that the European lifestyle is better than in North America. Just depends what you're optimizing for.
Europe is still a good destination for the well-heeled (and with a job lined up -- but that's true for almost any developed country), but if one isn't in that situation, Europe not the paradise many young people in Canada think it is. Sure you have walkable cities, universal healthcare, social safety net, train travel to tons of interesting destinations. But you also have to deal with a lot more bureaucracy, inefficiencies, and ultimately being a foreigner in a land that is not an immigrant nation like Canada is. The cuisines in European cities are nowhere near as diverse as the cuisines available in Toronto. You can't take risks and do new things as easily. The downside of the good life is comfort -- and a lack of dynamism.
p.s. looking back on CETA after 7 years (it's still not fully in effect), it looks like the effects were largely negligible to Canadians except in niche areas because of other effects that canceled out the advantages.
I buy ski equipment from European online retailers for cheaper than from the US because no tariffs on it. It arrives here faster, and with better customer service, too.
Considering how tightly Canada is currently coupled to the US, this would be an absolute nightmare for many businesses. Yeah you'd gain a hypothetical overseas market, but in turn you're losing alignment with an absolutely massive market right next door! That's something like 60% of your import/export, gone.
The two are not compatible.
In any case, we already have a free trade agreement with the EU. In some respects for some products its better than what we have with the US.
To dream the impossible dream...
If anything the recent Trumpian outbursts have demonstrated just how strong the inertia is on this. For it to change will take a genuine existential crisis.
I also know dozens of international couples who met and fell in love with someone from one of the other countries and have seen countless relationships forced to part ways because of stupid visa issues.
I’d like to see the free movement of people come first, a military agreement second (a la NATO) and then whatever free trade agreements that make sense.
Anyway, I tend to agree with the sentiment that, in ascending order of silly accents, Canadians, English, Irish, Australian, and Kiwis, share a common culture and work ethic.
I dunno how anyone can take New Zealanders seriously, if you’ve ever heard one speak you’d surely agree.[2] I’m gonna blame the Dutch, the silly bastards.
The four freedoms of the single market you get in return are incredible.
A bureaucracy is a body of non-elected government officials (aka bureaucrats).
The EU parliament is elected and the EU council is indirectly elected.
Trump-inspired conservatives are on their ways to be guaranteed majority at the next federal elections.
Canadians are just tired of Justin Trudeau after almost 10 years. Which happens to even the best of leaders, and JT is far from it.
Because much of the landmass is uninhabitable. For instance, Nunavut is about 20% larger than Alaska, yet has less than one tenth its population - because most of the province is tundra. Even building a road through it is iffy - a city? Forget it.
That's called permafrost.
Can people live in the empty parts of Canada?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco%E2%80%93European_Union...
But just because you’re at least partly in Europe isn’t enough in some cases depending on who you are, and this was used in the aughts as a way to defer any potential membership by Turkey (which at least started the process of joining back then) and Russia (something European politicians didn’t want to even consider) by pointing out how much of their territory is in Asia. Morocco’s self-proclaimed justification was that Spain has a couple of cities in Northern Africa wholly surrounded by Moroccan territory, but Morocco still doesn’t make the cut for EU politicians.
However the Republic of Cyprus is entirely on continental Asia, not wholly in control of the island it claims as its sovereign territory, but considered “culturally European”, so it got in.
Canada is probably more of a Morocco than a Cyprus in this case, not physically in Europe, not even physically proximate to Europe the way at least Cyprus and Morocco are, and probably not considered European-enough.
If this all sounds like crazy EU politics, that’s kind of what it is, but in defense of the crazies here, you have to be a bit crazy when you’re trying to build some kind of weird supranational cultural identity in a place like Europe.
A little bit of an understatement, that consensus has almost been completely shattered in Canada.
Currently Canada can barely handle the people it has, there's quite a severe housing crisis. There's just not enough housing in any of the areas that people want to live. Canada does not need more people.
And most of the people hypothetically moving to Canada from Europe will probably be refugees who have little ties to Europe. Which would also not go down well in Canada (because of uhh, human tendencies against the outgroup).
Personally, I'm pro-immigration. It keeps the cost of labour down which is good for people like me. I just think even the current level of immigration has been too destabilizing for our society, so I'm opposed to increasing it yet further.
That being said, as a Canadian I'd love to have the right to live and work in the EU, and I would love for honest hard-working Europeans to have the right to live and work in Canada. And I'd love closer and denser trade ties, for example an investment in LNG shipping infrastructure to help Canada and the EU, assuming this is economical and not just a pipe dream.
Jesus. Really?
Someone living alone in a cabin is (economically) poor. Someone in a small town may have customers, but not many, and it's going to be hard to expand. What you need is more people - more people buying, more people to work for you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...
This is overstated. The alarm was sounded on this 2 decades ago for several east Asian countries, but they're not on fire. They're fine. Old people die.
If the fertility rate mattered that much, they'd have scrambled to make any number of policy changes including better work-life balance (see: Japan, SK, China), or plain ol' immigration, but they don't because it simply does not matter. All the efforts have been completely half-assed (like tax benefits, cash).
Countries are a bit like experiments or alternatives and that's a good thing!
While I don't think that we'll see a one world government in my lifetime, I believe that Canada joining the EU would be a sort of approximation of that and would be bad for our Canadian experiment.
It is not great if you are looking for useful policy.
free movement of capital and people between eu and canada would probably be the next major step in this direction
Not sure EU countries would want millions of our immigrants flooding them though, especially once they see wages in Germany...
No European would seriously consider the reduction of population density that comes from admitting Canada to be a meaningful improvement to the EU. Canadian energy resources would definitely be welcome, but that's hardly enough of a reason to extend membership, especially since a trans-Atlantic power cable (which would be needed to get the most out of Canada's hydro) would be a beast of an engineering challenge itself.
Tighter EU-Canada integration is a much more important and achievable goal, as the article points out in the final paragraph.
This shows how narrow the responsibilities of the EU actually are.
For example, France lost a key advantage ("competition rules") with nuclear energy essentially because it was considered unfair to other countries. But energetic independence is fundamental in part to economical independence: it's a key aspect of sovereignty.
Another example would be the Euro ("monetary policy"):
> Give me control over a nation’s currency, and I care not who makes its laws.
Or, the fact that external laws (from the UE) can be applied to member countries without approval from the people is IMO another rather clear form of loss of sovereignty: a considerable amount (~20% for France IIRC) of legislation is imposed by external, un-elected bodies.
Disclaimer: I am neither American, nor very educated about what I just wrote.
1. Can your country introduce any law without asking the EU for approval? 2. Can the EU mandate your country to implement a specific law? 3. Do you still believe your country is sovereign?
The streets here are clean, spotting a homeless person is borderline impossible even if you try, in US I've seen tents, bidonvilles, homelessness everywhere, drugged zombies as soon as you entered the wrong streets in basically every city.
There's much less anxiety around healthcare or education here, violence and crime are very different too. My 180k people city hasn't seen a murder (outside very few caused by family violence, which are virtually the only cause for murders in my country) in decades.
Actually now that I think about it, I also found Canada (where my wife has family that emigrated there 80 years ago) to be better in all those regards. Have you ever crossed from Canada to US at Niagara falls? If you did and walked more than 500 meters you know what I'm talking about.
Mind you, there's no doubt US does many things great, as an engineer and wannabe entrepeneur I know US would've given me more chances, but believe it or not, not everybody wants to live the american way and money isn't everything if you have to use it to feel safer and less anxious in guarded neighbourhoods like some of my best friends in US live in.
There's countless things that US does great, and that does awfully, different people and cultures may weigh the pros/cons differently.
Canadian cities are the cleanest of the three countries, but homelessness and drug use are just as prevalent in Canada as in the US. I don't remember seeing many addicts in Europe but there were certainly a lot of homeless refugees when I lived there. I guess you could argue that's not the fault of the host country, unlike the homelessness in Canada/US.
Other than that, the US cities I've lived in have felt safe and livable, with vibrant street life and plenty of great restaurants and events. I prefer urban neighborhoods which are close to the downtown core, but outside of it; the visible social problems seem to be very concentrated in certain areas, which can be avoided.
If by "guarded neighborhoods" you mean gated communities with full-time live security, I think your friends are major outliers. A very small minority of people live that way in America.
I do agree with you about "less anxiety around healthcare or education". My European friends see the world and life very differently. People don't feel guilty about living a normal life in the same way that some Americans seem to: the culture here screams "strive" and "excel", and I think that drives a lot of people to be miserable when they feel they are falling short of that expectation.
This literally can't be true every single large city in Canada is struggling with increasing homelessness right now.
Do you live in a cabin up in Muskoka??
The gun violence in US is higher, but the chances of that impacting you are low, if you avoid problematic areas.
Having lived on both sides of the border for many years, Canada first needs to improve its version of "universal healthcare" before making a pitch like this.
That being said, the general lockdown of the boarder after 9-11 has driven a lot of people who live close to the boarder nuts. Crossing the boarder used to be like crossing a state/province boarder. If you look at satellite photos of the boarder around Maine, NH, and VT, it's full of little country roads where you could cross unimpeded until 9-11, and private properties that go right up to the boarder.
There's even a golf course that's in Canada, but the driveway is on a US street. You're allowed to enter from the US, but they follow Canadian laws (specifically, the Canadian drinking age.)
Personally, I wish we could figure out how to resolve our (relatively minor) differences so we could keep an open boarder.
In the U.S., a cancer diagnosis can lead to bankruptcy, while treatment is free (or close to free) in most EU countries. Education is largely free as well, and you don't see people walking around armed like they’re in the Marine Corps. So, I'm not sure what benchmark we're using to measure this.
The Republican party seems to view any new possible states as free congressional seats for the Democrats, so I can't see enough votes for such a thing regardless.
Just hang on - this isn't as crazy as it sounds!
Think about it:
- There would be a shared defense and infrastructure: NORAD already has the US and Canada tied at the hip for defense. Greenland, being strategically crucial to Arctic security, fits naturally into this alignment. Folding them into a single framework could simplify and strengthen North American defense.
- Economic integration's already there: the US and Canada are each other's largest trading partners. NAFTA (and now USMCA) means much of the heavy economic lifting is already done. Greenland’s resources are becoming increasingly important as Arctic access opens up.
- Population and resources balance out: Canada has land and resources but not enough people. The US has people and markets but strained resources. Greenland sits on untapped potential. There’s a complementary puzzle here that fits. Heck, I know a bunch of people that would move to Greenland in my circle of friends alone if it were a state of the Union.
Think about the plausibility, even if you don' think it's likely.
Sure, there's political gridlock in the US? Sure. But let’s not pretend Canadian politics are a beacon of stability. And Denmark’s hold on Greenland isn’t exactly ironclad. In unstable times, pragmatic unions can look attractive.
And yeah, there are a lot of cultural differentials, but flipping flap jacks, look at the cultural divide between California vs Indiana or TX vs Vermont. Mergers like this happen incrementally - closer military cooperation, shared Arctic development, economic harmonization.
Not saying this will/could happen tomorrow, but in a time of rethinking alliances, I think it’s less far-fetched than it sounds. If Europe can experiment with supranational governance, why can’t North America????
What are the realistic roadblocks here beyond just "politics?"
Not sure what that would do with Canadian economy. IMO it would be even more desirable target for emigration than the UK when it was in the EU. I know I would certainly consider it, being a software engineer.
Domestic trained talent tends to leave for the US. Because under NAFTA it's trivial to do so.
Manual labour, yeah, that's another story. NAFTA doesn't grant free movement of unskilled labour at all.
Canada is already part of NATO for defence, so joining the EU does nothing for defence.
Does Canada want freedom of movement of EU citizens into Canada? They already have a housing crisis.
Greece's experience shows a single currency isn't really beneficial to all members of the EU, so Canada would be crazy to give that up.
I wouldn't think about it even if I could make more money there.
(So is half of Iceland.)
> The Monroe Doctrine is a United States foreign policy position that opposes European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It holds that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers is a potentially hostile act against the United States. The doctrine was central to American grand strategy in the 20th century.
After that, why not? Turkey has been in discussion for ages and is barely in Europe. Also, South Africa might be interesting in the future if they can see eye to eye on political and economic issues.
That's a pretty big "if".
Right now South Africa is a basket case, with corruption at the highest levels of government, and one in five citizens living in extreme poverty. The crime rate is extreme, with high levels of murder and rape.
So yes I agree, South Africa would be very "interesting" if it joined the EU.
Cyprus is geographically located in Asia but has been successfully been admitted to the EU after satisfying other (non-geographical) conditions for EU membership.
Armenia and Georgia have also been determined by the EU to be eligible for membership despite being entirely located in Asia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia%E2%80%93European_Union...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Georgia_to_the_Eu...
To give you some idea on the intellectual credulity with which the idea should be treated.
Canada is a young kid with a lot of good opportunities in the future.
Europe is an old drowning rusty bureacratic ship.
It should get their shit together themselves
We don't have cities full of skyscrapers but we have enough.
Brexit should have been a near no-op. But it was a huge pain. They hadn't even planned for it or thought about it.
EU should have a pre-memeber clearing state that countries stay in and then vote every year or n years to be "in" or "out" of the EU. But part of being in the EU should be to maintain non-in versions of all policies so that members can actually negotiate and easily leave without having huge bureaucratic cost.
This would make the EU stronger and better. Currently, there are many terrible undemocratic institutions that are being used to ruin countries.
So countries should maintain two sets of all regulations — the actual ones and then also parallel hypothetical ones — and this would somehow reduce bureaucratic cost rather than double it?
The execution of Brexit ought to put to rest the notion that “we’ll make our own rules!” somehow would save money or improve anything. Britain has accomplished exactly nothing except recreate local bureaucracies they had already managed to eliminate because of harmonized EU rules.
How was it ever going to be a "near no-op"? Putting everything else aside, Northern Ireland was always going to be huge sticking points. Ireland would make sure it was.
Besides, it was in the EU's self-interest to maximise the pain for the UK, in order to discourage other member states from going the same way - and the EU succeeded. Marine Le Pen no longer talks about "Frexit", instead she proposes reforming the EU from within.
Also, them constantly replacing their negotiatiors didn't help. But at least they're out now.
Do the United States have a system like that?
General consensus since then has been that states can’t leave, but who knows! Things could change.
Why on earth would the EU do that? Why would any organization put in huge effort to ensure that its members could easily and cheaply leave at any time?
Canada has jus soli, like all countries of the Americas, but unlike any European country.
The EU is getting more radical about border enforcement and deportations.
I'm not sure how land acknowledgements are supposed to work in europe.
For my evidence I'll reference this top upvoted comment that references actual truths, realities on the ground:
"Does the economist know what time it is? Nationalism is resurgent: nationalist parties now control the U.S. and Italy. Canada seems poised to Poilievre, who has made impassioned appeals to Canadian nationalism. And in Germany, France, and the U.K., nationalist parties have effectively rendered the governing coalitions impotent, even if they cannot yet command a majority. What a time to suggest that Canadians cede their sovereignty to bureaucrats in far-away Brussels!" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42591290
As a Canadian, the #1 reason I wouldn't want to join the EU is that the Schengen Agreement almost seems purpose designed to force destructive mass migration, diluting cause and effect just so much that no one in particular can be accountable and put a stop to it.
I mean, the fact that his name is spoken about in public as if this is a serious leader capable of managing a nation's affairs is evidence enough of, yes, broken US.
Situation in Canada isn't awesome. But if there's anything that would bring Canadians together it's listening to blowhard Americans pretend some level of superiority while they elect a game show host and felon to the highest office in their land.
Meanwhile, in Europe, self-inflicted wounds from austerity, corruption, and years of ineffective policies continue to mount – and as usual, immigrants are the scapegoats. When the euro was introduced, the conversation was about harmonizing taxes, social welfare, pensions, and wages. Now, the EU celebrates forcing iPhones to adopt USB-C, as if that matters – and they pat themselves on the back for it.
Big corporations avoiding taxes in Ireland? Silence. German companies suppressing wages by threatening to relocate to Poland? Why not raise wages in Poland and create a fairer landscape?
These days, the EU feels more like an extension of NATO than a representative body. Its survival so far seems like a miracle, but I wouldn’t place bets on its future. The normalization of parties like AfD, pushing to exit the EU, adds to the uncertainty.
Meanwhile the policies the EU makes are created by politicians from each of the EU member states. Some of them being originally proposed by politicians from the very countries whose citizens decry them the most.
It's fun to draw parallels to "the federal government sucks for reason X" in the US.
Truly poetic to watch.
Canada is effectively already the 51st state and has been so for 200+ years. It cannot be understated how greatly Canadians have benefited from this association and arrangement.
As far as immigration goes, it seems to be beneficial for the existing residents of a country to have controlled immigration at a certain rate. If the rate is too high, people complain, and if rates are too low, economies suffer.
Building houses works the same way, build them too fast and everyone suffers, build them too slow and everyone suffers. We aim for the slow, steady and sustainable increase.
As for this idea... barring a massive increase in spending by NATO members not including USA, Canada doesn't have the ability to become part of Europe. OTOH, they sure could/would get annexed by USA if that's the way the conversation is starting to go.