A two-state solution for Canada?
- Thread starter Machjo
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Ontarians*
well technically we could throw in the Prairies as well (despite the oil money, which won't last forever, someone else is paying for the subsidization of Albertanski's, Saskason's and Manitobaneko's wheat).
Seperatism is a touchy issue in the States which would probably lead to a war, the Democrats wouldn't want to lose New England, California or the Pacific North West; whereas, the Republicans would love to see them leave in order to cement a Christian Theocratic Republic in North America.
The reverse would be true if Obama remains President and the Democrats regain the House. Effectively, North America right now is not quite a powder keg but make no distinction the pot has been simmering since the fall of the Soviet Union.
I think it would be the Prairies,
the Maritimes might become a destitute nation but they will still have a strong culture and defendable terrain. Whereas, the Harperian Republic of Alberta; once it runs out of oil, would become even more destitute without Federal subsidization funds and would be forced to commit itself back to Ontario, or to the United States.
I can agree that they pay their share of the national debt. As for printing their own money, both sides would benefit from the stability of a common currency, but in the end that would require common agreement on that. And in principle, the same applies to citizenship.
That said, it would seem to be mutually beneficial if we could in fact agree to share common citizenship at a minimum, and preferably also a shared currency, on the grounds that it allows for a larger North American market that would be more attractive to foreign investors.
To take an example:
If you're an investor from country X thinking of investing in Alberta, let's say, would you be more attracted to a Canada where your employees, as Canadian citizens, can freely move to your Quebec city office and vice versa, with your company having easy access to the most qualified workers of Pan-Canada without unnecessary immigration bureaucracy (and ideally without having to worry about currency fluctuations between the two regions too), or one in which you'd be limited to a non-Quebec workforce to pool from at your Calgary office, a Quebec-only workforce at your Montreal office (which can be problematic especially if we should be talking about a cutting-edge high-tech company that regularly has to go headhunting abroad for special talents), and have to convert currencies between your offices on a regular basis too?
Now most companies can work around these obstacles to a degree, but they'd rather not have to work around them in the first place. Especially with such a small population, and thus labour and consumer market as it is already.
I suppose you should be asking Parizeau.
How many of those industries will stay in Quebec if Quebec ever does decide to leave? I'm betting there will be another mass exodus to get away from nationalization.
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Who said anything about leaving?
It's expensive to move those assets and those companies have more than enough money to elect military hawks who'll be willing to spend 4%, plus weapon purchases, of Quebec's GDP on the armed forces.
Considering most of these companies are subsidiaries of even larger foreign companies, they probably would benefit the most from a militarized (fighting or otherwise) break up of Canada.
it would be no fricken different than them having an office in New York and opening in Alberta. Quebec would be a different country, albeit, I wold lay odds that it would not necessarily be all that stable or conducive to a multi national setting up a head office until it proved it could survive.
There would be a big difference. The US has a market 10 times Canada's population. As a result, it's more than worth whatever bureaucratic hassles a company must go through to access such a huge labour and consumer market. With pan-Canada having 1/10 that market, and itself being split with separate parts having their own monetary policies, and possibly citizenship policies too, suddenly smaller multinationals might start to think it not worth the hassle for such a small market.
In short, owing to the population, you can't compare Canada with, let's say, the US, China, India, Russia, the EU (though multiple countries, most do share a common currency and free labour movement and free trade within the Union, not to mention the UK itself is 5 times Canada's population), etc. Population-wise, we're light weights.
It's expensive to have your investments and plant nationalized too - or to lose the subsidies that lured you there.
and what company's are you willing to sell out our independence, sovereignty, and dignity for?
Then Quebec and Cuba are going to have a swell relationship, one dating back to that nut Trudeau, if they nationalize privately owned armanent industries.
We share a common citizenship and a lot more already. If anything, the two-state solution being proposed would give both English-Canada and Queebc even more sovereignty from one another. However, there is a limit to sovereignty. Imagine if each town in Canada had its own passports and currency. Good luck with that.
As for selling ourselves out, that just empty rhetoric. A country needs markets. Go back to the 1800s and we needed markets. Not much has changed since, except that globalization has intensified that need. Unless you want to go back to the horse and buggy in the name of sovereignty? I'b be willing to sacrifice some sovereignty (heck, all developed countries have in fact developed precisely by sacrificing sovereignty in moderation for larger world markets). It's been going on for well over a century.
Such a solution would make things easier for the Quebecois, but also for us. So if I understand you correctly, you'd be prepared to screw Canada over just to screw the Quebecois over? This reminds me of a story:
One day God offers a man one wish and will grant his neighbour double. The man thinks about it and finally says:
God, make me blind in one eye.
So if Canada has the option of adopting a policy that would benefit both it and Quebec, or one that would hurt it and Quebec, I sure hope we have not stooped so low as a nation that we would choose to hurt ourselves just to hurt Quebec even more.
The question though, is will the change be smooth, orderly and friendly, or chaotic and hateful?
Eventually the market argument becomes a mute point, even at the moment between us and the Americans, we are frankly losing big time to quantitative (cheap plastic) industry in Asia and quality industry in Europe.
Creighton's commercial thesis of the "Empire of the St. Lawrence", provides us insight as to why Canada was formed and why Canada will eventually be dissolved.
Mainly put, the commercial elites came together thinking they could create a west-east trading empire but the present has proven contrary, most of the trade being north-south, the funds ending up in Ottawa and Quebec, the impossible to defend Prairies, and the sinkholes that tend to be western Canada and the Maritimes.
This runs contrary to Creighton's theory, which predicted that the commercial elites in the St. Lawrence would be independent and rival those in the United States, which is clearly not the case as we pay second fiddle to the Yanks.
Please elaborate... Wouldn't you be happy to finally be rid of the Bloc? To see your politics concentrate on the real issues rather than on national unity?