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Values and Culture

Thank you for participating in the Dialogue on Foreign Policy. The interactive web site is now closed. The Minister's report will appear on this web site once it is released.

This Forum is bilingual, and participants post messages in their language of choice.

51st State

Contributor: cfallon

Date: 2003-01-31 11:52:00


Canada will never be the 51st state.

We would never enter as 1 complete state. We would enter at least as 5 - 10 states with 3 territories. If 10 states, then we would add 20% more senators, while adding 10% more population. The US would balk at this, and we would enter as something closer to 5 states. (Quebec would never join except as its own state).

Anti-Americans like to downplay the impact on the US such annexation would have. But the tenor of US politics would change considerably and a great disruption of their 2 party system would result. They would never accept it.

THE US DOESN'T WANT CANADA.

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51st State

Contributor: afrancis

Date: 2003-01-31 16:08:57


I agree that the US (especially the Republican party) doesn't want Canada as a state. The reasons are that we would probably be a hassle, as you point out, and that the US probably won't need to go this far to impose their will on us: through an eventual Free Trade Area of the Americas, US corporations might soon be able to control social policies -- e.g., in education and health -- by disputing Canadian laws and reglementation that pose limits (however justified) to the 'free market' in these areas. This way they get the best of both worlds: the Canadian market and none of the problems related to integrating extra citizens and (in comparison to average Americans) progressive voters.

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51st State

Contributor: cell

Date: 2003-02-06 14:56:49


If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, why have two of the last three Prime Ministers established residency in the U.S., e.g. Mulroney and Campbell?
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, why has it sought to control Canada's policy towards Cuba, (Helms Burton), while during the Cuban Missile Crisis JFK was smoking cuban cigars?
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, why does it unilateraly attempt to regulate the Great Lakes fisheries favouring tourism over commercial fisheries?
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, how come the majority of our bright students educated with Canadian tax dollars are hired by U.S. firms? (That doesn't seem to be a NAFTA issue)
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, who supplies a steady stream of accentless speech for the America broadcasting industry?
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, where is the third sea in the American motto "from sea to sea to sea"?
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, what do they want? Mexico? The Phillipines?
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, why do American travellers wear Canadian flags on their backpacks?
The issue is that Canada needs the U.S., the U.S. needs Canada, and the U.K. uses Canada as a foreign policy buffer to maintain its global economic interests in the face of American corporate expansionism.
Vis a vis the concept of the 51st state, Canada is the 51st state, in that at the North American bargaining table Canada is only given the clout of a state, less than Texas, more than Maine.
It is perhaps the inability of Canada's leaders to recognize the richness of our resouces, natural, human, and diplomatic that has led to our current fracture as a nation, e.g. The Prairie centric Reform Party all but obliterating the federal P.C.'s, The P.Q. controlling the opposition in Chrétien's previous term, and the negotiations of a pacific rim economic community separating B.C. from the rest of Canada.
Don't fret, however, it is not as if the U.S. is attempting to control our domestic policy with a homeland security innitiative or anything, oh wait a second that's being negotiated.
It's alright though because Canada's notions of a free society directly reflect those of the U.S. that's why the underground railway didn't bring slaves to Canada, and Canadians deported all the Vietnam war draft dodgers, oops, the inverse is true.
But don't fret, if Canadians ignore the fact that California has polluted all their fresh water, that New York is regulating the Lake Ontario fisheries, that during the Quebec referendum the idea of franco annexation to the U.S. was hot news, and that NAFTA is directly biased against primary producers, we might just stay Canadian.

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51st State

Contributor: cfallon

Date: 2003-02-07 11:39:33


1) What Mulroney and Campbell do has nothing to do with the US.
2) Wanting us to adopt a like-minded policy on Cuba is simply that.
3) I agree - the Great Lakes should not be commercially fished. Am I a US puppet simply because I disagree with you?
4) Majority is a term that means something: the largest chunk of a population. What you say is compeletely false. Our brightest leave for the US only because they are so stifled by the monolithic thinking you must adopt in Canada or you'll be declared un-Canadian.
5) Accentless broadcasts? What does that mean?
6) Alaska is on the Arctic Ocean. Alaska is part of the US. Both these facts can be verified in your atlas.
7) The US does not want Mexico or the Phillipines. I think you have an exagerrated notion of the desirability of these 2 countries.
8)US tourists put Canadian flags on their backpacks because they know that they will be treated more humanely outside their country. For some reason, Europeans feel free to discriminate against US citizens.
9) Quebec would never accept being part of a 51st state. I would not accept it and I voted NO in the last referendum. I don't think its appropriate to refer to any issue involving the state of Quebec as "franco" - there are some of us Quebecers (20%) who are not franco.
10) Canada's future does not lie in its natural resources. We are not drawers of water anymore. As a mining engineer, I can assure you that Canada's mining industry is in decline as it turns its financial might southward.

The US environmental standards are MUCH higher than Canada's. We are the dirtiest people on the planet when it comes to industrial pollution and toxic waste. Because our land is so immense and sparsely populated, we can ignore this fact - but it will come back to haunt us. We ignore our environmental degredation at our peril and would be much better off adopting the higher standards of the US, California in particular.

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