Inspired by this thread a few months ago. Please assume, hypothetically and without screaming in outraged Canadian nationalism, that the provinces of Canada (peacefully) become States of the Union. There is no more Canadian Parliament (the provincial parliaments and governments remain), but Canadian representatives and senators now will be elected to Congress. (Presumably there will be a Canadian Caucus.) These new CanaCongressritters are of the same political parties they had back home – Conservative, Liberal, New Democratic, and Bloc Quebecois. A one-state party like BQ won’t matter much in U.S. politics. What about the others? Which will caucus with the Democrats and which will caucus with the Republicans? (N.B.: Split closely as the big two are among the Lower 48, and with Canadians now making up nearly 10% of the HoR and 20 out of 120 senators, neither major party can have an absolute majority of seats, any more, without some Canadians.)
Wait, did Apple bought it and then sold it to the USA? 
I think you have the model backwards. When most of the US is arid and unable to grow crops and we become greatly dependent on the northernmost band of US territory and most of Canada for food production, it will be a matter of the US states becoming Canadian provinces.
Same discussion otherwise; carry on.
My guess would be that, being Canadians, they would develop an entirely new set of political parties within a couple of years.
Would you even want to take us???
It would be impolite not to.
I just have serious trouble accepting that Canada would dissolve itself and all the provinces would opt for statehood. I mean… why would Quebec join a universally English speaking country?
Puerto Rico wants to, so why not? Together, they would pretty much put an end to “Official English.”
My guess is that Quebec would only join if French was one of the official languages of the federation, and that would lead to demands that Spanish also have official status. Such demands would cause a resurgence of the Official English movement as a direct response.
There’s a lot of reasons why Quebec isn’t politically like Puerto Rico.
- Puerto Rico is already American it merely wants statehood now.
- Puerto Rico isn’t accessible by drive, thus it isn’t as culturally threatened.
- Puerto Rico is Spanish speaking (which is the minority language of the US), while Quebec is French speaking (their language issues would be a third place afterthought)
- In Canada, at least, Quebec holds a very prominent place as the second largest province, joint founder of the country, etc… In the US it is the sole Francophone state unable to control it’s borders, nor communicate, nor sway the politics of the large English empire that it is literally on the fringe outskirts of…
For this (and many other reasons that are complex) most Quebeckers would just as well go it alone at take their seat in the world of nations.
Conservatives become Republicans; Liberals become democrats. NDP becomes the progressive wing of the Democrats, but with a lot of defections leftward among the more radical. The U.S. Green party experiences a bulge in membership based mainly in Quebec, that fades over the next decade.
Politically, the Democrats get pulled left somewhat. The Republicans shake their heads at the Wild Rose guys from Alberta and try to convince them that Paul Ryan isn’t too left wing to take seriously.
Plus Quebec is more then double Texas’ size; do you think the ‘lone star state’ would accept being pushed to something like the 6th or 7th largest state? nuh uh.
My 2 cents worth:
The Bloc are quite left-leaning, but as they have only 4 seats and 6% of the vote last election, they are not much of a force.
Our current Green Party member would be so far to the left of the Democrats, she would be invisible. Greens got about 4% of the vote last election
NDP is far too left for the Democrats, even with Mulcair as the new leader of that party (As official opposition leader, he is trying to be more centrist). 30% of the vote last federal election
Liberals are maybe the progressive left of the Democrat party. 19% of vote last federal election.
Conservatives got 40% of the vote last federal election. 50% of these voters would probably be democrats.
The Wild Rose party in Alberta is probably the only one I can think of that might allign with the Republican party. And they lost the last provincial election, in the most Right-leaning province in Canada. At any rate, they would certainly not think of anyone in the Republicans as being “left”. At the most, they would be pretty sane, centrist Republicans.
So pretty much every single province would elect politicians that would caucus with the Democrats. Some would do so reluctantly, as they would be far to the left of the Democrats - maybe they would form their own group of “Blue-Dog Democrats”
With 55 Electoral Votes (based on population), the provinces would reliably always be Safe Democrat.
We’d never take you. No offense but there is no country that is conservative enough for the Republicans that they haven’t already labelled a terrorist regime.
The political alignment would switch to Republican-Democrat at a federal level; there’s be no point in other parties existing.
Initially the advantage for the Democratic Party would be unbelievably massive; it would be the equivalent of adding another California but with a much greater Democratic skew. On the issue of universal health care, the Canadian states would have no choice but to implement it on a state level - the people would not accept anything less - and would be huge proponents of a true national system.
Quebec would be a different case; they’d demand protection for their language or would demand independence.
If Canada was one state it’d be 50 electoral votes. If it was ten, it’d be 68.
Yes, come to think of it, west of the Maritimes, all the Canadian provinces are frickin’ huge . . .
I don’t think culture is so much threatened by whether someone can whip their donkey cart over a mountain pass, but by whether the potentially-threatened culture is inundated by and/or receptive to the pop culture spewing out the end of their DSL line.
Isn’t health care in Canada already administered on the provincial level?
Yes, but it’s then reinforced by the Canada Health Act and the corresponding absolutely gigantic amounts of federal transfers to the provinces. You’d have to replace those transfers somehow.
Well if we are going to absorb our friendly neighbors to the north, I think it makes a lot of sense just to take in Canada as one whole new state, and let Quebec go their own way.