And toilet smuggling.
The damned Canadians are trying to wreck our environment by selling us the SUV sized toilets we crave.
More than once, I’ve said that the US needs Canada to exist like any drunk that gets sloppy and smashes up the bar needs the sober friend to go around and apologize for him the next day; “He’s not that bad, you should really get to know him better, you’d see he’s a great guy…”
Beaufort Sea seabed (and the huge pot of oil that lies under it), and rights to control passage (esp. oil tankers )through the Northwest Passage.
You know what would really be a hoot, would be to merge Quebec and Alberta in one country. 
(Oh, wait a minute, that is already the case.)
I don’t think Canadians are “anti-American” today as well. It’s just that I am under the impression that some Americans believe that us French-Canadians are fundamentally anti-American, and I wanted to say that it isn’t the case.
Yes, as I said, the issue of joining the US was discussed among nationalists during the 19[sup]th[/sup] century. Today the issue (among Quebecers, not among French-Canadians from other provinces) is indeed whether or not to remain a part of Canada. I notice that you lived in Ottawa when you were in Canada: I live just north of this, in Gatineau; I must say that this region is an interesting place due to the contact of both cultures, and I must also say that the idea of independence is less popular here due to the fact that our economy is connected to the economy of Ottawa.
This is what surprises me: that most French-Canadians you met were in favour of Québec independence. As I said earlier, it is actually less popular here than in the province as a whole, and in Ottawa you probably also met many French-speaking Ontarians, who really have no reason to favour Québec independence. Maybe you also lived in a few other Québec cities. As for the English-Canadians you met (yes, that is the word and I use it, but maybe it’s less common in English), most of them likely didn’t mean it when they were talking about joining the US. Some of the more conservatively-minded among them might have entertained the idea of merging with a more conservative country, but English-Canadians tend to define themselves in contrast to Americans, and wouldn’t want to erase the differences.
I know that Canada is largely self-governed, but I seem to recall the Queen of England hanging about on their folding money, and she’s also the official head of state from what I recall, though I know the dominion status changed somewhat in the last decade or so.
So anyway, would Great Britain feel compelled to do more than clear their throats angrily if the US was to make such a move? Actually, a lot of to do would be made about occupying a non-threatening country, but I also can’t imagine that any other country would be willing to sit grumpily by as so many natural resources are snatched up by the US.
I could see a time when an exclusive alliance between the US and Canada would make sense in regards to resources, but again, to many other fully modernized countries would have something nasty to say about that.
One other thing, if the US was to make this resource grab, wouldn’t some other country conceivably be compelled to then make a grab after the lion’s share of the middle east in order to pretect their resource needs?
Largely?
Yes, as a member of NATO.
Correct me if I’m wrong (I may very well be), but I seem to remember that the UK government protested when the US invaded Grenada, since although Elizabeth II is the head of state of Grenada, she wasn’t informed of the US’s intentions. But I don’t think that they did much more than protest. As Raygun99 said, if a NATO country is attacked, the UK has to defend this country by virtue of their membership in NATO.
I could see the response for Canada being invaded quite a bit nastier than would be the one for Grenada. And of course, you’re both right, NATO would have something to say. I just wondered if Great Britain would be likely consider the US invasion a direct act of war specifically against GB.
No. Canada is completely independant. The Queen of the United Kingdom is also Queen of Canada. That can be confusing for people sometimes.
The whole thing is a bit silly. So what if Canada developed nukes? What would they do with them? Shoot them 100 miles over the border? you can experince 300rem (from a*1megaton surgace blast) up to, and over, 160miles. How many large canadian cities are within 160miles of what would be primary US targets?
I know we tease our canadian members on being slow, but I dont think anyone is THAT slow!
*IIRC the largest nuclear weapon today can deliver around 50-60 megatons. So the REM radius could potentially be MUCH larger than 160 miles…
Canadian nukes? Isn’t it, like, unconstitutional or something for Canada’s government to do anything that interesting?
Canada has in fact possessed and deployed nuclear weapons; until at least 1971, Canada possessed nukes for deployment on Starfighter jets in Germany, and Voodoo fighters carried Genie nuclear-tipped missiles, I believe right up to 1983. I believe nuclear-tipped depth charges were deployed for some time as well. Canada always considered itself a nuclear-armed power; the only reason we didn’t build our own is that it was cheaper to get them from the USA. It wasn’t much publicized, but we had 'em.
This is something of a circular question. The only reason Canada WOULD construct nuclear weapons for striking the United States is if we weren’t allies anymore.
If we just did it for the sheer hell of it, I suspect the USA would feel threatened, and for good reason. Canada’s various nuclear deployments, like the Genie missile or the bombs carried by Starfighters, were specifically deployed to fight the Soviet bloc, and were part of an overall NATO strategy; it was not really a much that Canada was putting nukes as it was that NATO was deploying them and Canada was doing its part.
As for whether NATO would intervene, I think people are forgotting that NATO historically doesn’t consider the collective self-defense clause to apply to inter-NATO wars; cf. Greece and Turkey. If the USA were to suddenly attack Canada tomorrow NATO’s opinion would not matter; the worldwide outrage would be enormous.
After Dief was tossed (in part for his anti-nuke stance), Pearson brought them in. When Trudeau took over he was anti-nuke, leading to his declaring Canada a nuclear weapons free zone in 1971, but I believe that we still had nukes in Canada until 1984.
(As an aside, C.D. Howe’s Chalk River Reactor - our first full sized reactor – was used in part for military purposes from the get go, and I believe that the Brit’s first nuclear weapon test used our plutonium from there. The close relationship continues, for the folks who designed our most recent nuclear power reactor included a significant contingent of nuclear engineers from England who had worked on British nuclear submarine power plants – although I would not want to confuse power plants with weapons. )
I work with some of the guys who flew those Genie-armed Voodoos. They tell me the nukes were “American”, and that there was a few token yanks on each base. The Americans had one set of keys, the Canadian had the other; both were needed to access the the weapons. Apparently this was the slight of hand that allowed Canada to be “Nuclear-free”.
I think this also applied to the Long John (huh huh huh) medium range missiles and the bombs carried by Starfighters.
In either case, if the Russians had come storming across the German border in 1966, it would not have taken much time for them to crack those babies out.
I believe you’re right.
By the way, the one of my co-workers refers to those missles as “the ol’ Bucket of Sunshine” :eek: