The CBC just put up a new backgrounder on their website: Canada’s Caribbean ambition. It concerns whether or not Canada should annex, or form some other sort of association with, the Turks and Caicos Islands of the Caribbean, currently a British overseas territory.
Lest you think it’s silly season down at the Mother Corp., this is in fact an idea I’ve heard floated around before. It’s also been brought up in Parliament on several occasions, the first of which was by Prime Minister Robert Borden himself in 1917. (Old parliamentary magazine with a brief history of the idea)
Apparently, the islanders are into it a great deal themselves. The archipelago’s main source of tourist trade is Canada, and a saying runs that “every islander knows a Canadian”.
Arguments are that it would be good for the economy, not to mention the national psyche, to have a warm island region in association with us; that it would help keep tourism dollars in Canada, rather than blowing them in the conversion to US dollars and other currencies; and that it would improve prospects for the Turks and Caicos Islanders as well.
Is there something we in the Free World can do for you oppressed victims of the Socialist States of Canada? Food parcels? Bibles? A portrait of Our Lord and Saviour George W. Bush to comfort you?
Dream on, Tommy.
I’ve favoured the annexation (with a clear majority vote of the T&C citizens) since I first heard about it in the early eighties. Start them out as a “territory” similar to the Yukon and in a generation or so, consider provincehood. Start culling in the tourist bucks from nonCanadians and then make plans to take the Falklands… oops, I’m getting ahead of myself.
In reply to the OP, yes. I think it is a marvelous idea. For now you’ll have your own Hawaii and when the next Ice Age comes you’ll still have year-round ports.
As for your ambitions towards Cuba, I regret that the US didn’t annex it when we had the chance and I still expect eventual statehood. You’ll have to fight us for it.
(I was watching a documentary filmed in Cuba and realized what an excellent place to retire it would be. I mean, I’ll die fairly young but I’ll outlive Castro, relations will normalize almost immediately but the cost of living will remain low, and the place looks like the Heaven I’m unlikely to land in. Perfect!)
That oughta be interesting. Heck, it may provide Maritime Command with a justification for actually investing in building a new Escort Canoe and buying a couple of low-mileage Fast Attack Inflatable Rafts. 'cause, y’know, you have to defend the sea route from Halifax and all that…
From where I sit, if they do it, let them do it like Bryan proposes, an integral annexation as territory-on-the-way-to-province-someday. Last thing we need is yet another neighbor with an ad-hoc “special-status” as overseas-somethingorother for tax and ship-registry purposes, to support our own indecision.
Some sort of relationship, if desired by majorities in both nations, sounds like a good idea. (The United Kingdom’s stance since the 1960s has been that any dependency that wants to depart, either to independence within or outside the Commonwealth or to a freely-chosen union with a neighboring country, is welcome to do so – but they’ll stand by anyone who wants to remaiun an overseas part of Old Blighty, including by force – e.g., Gibraltar and the Falkland Is.)
Provincial status seems a long way away, and I strongly doubt they’d want to surrender autonomy for even Canadian territorial status (Canada’s territories have significantly more independence of Ottawa than U.S. territories do of Washington.)
There are only six inhabited islands, out of 30 islets, with a total rea of 193 sq. mi., and a 1999 population of 16,863. (By comparison, P.E.I. has 2,185 sq. mi. and 134,557 people; all three Canadian territories have approximately twice the T&C population.)
Their main exports, according to the World Almanac, are salt, shellfish, and conch shells.
I could, on the other hand, see them as Canada’s Key West. But was it them or the Caimans that refused to let a cruise ship catering to gay couples dock a couple of years ago?
I say, go for it! Let Canada annex the Turks and Caicos! We could use somewhere to go in November (the most depressing month)… They get a Senator, an MP, insignia on the door of the Senate chamber… and lots of tourists.
Actually, Sam Stone, offhand, Canada annexing Cuba is not immeadiately a nonsensical idea, once Castro kicks the bucket. Assuming that the Cubans wanted to be annexed.
It would take a lot of planning though, not least to reduce expectations of Instant Affluence, and would be a major effort. I foresee an East Germany/West Germany situation as far as payments and rebuilding of infrastructure go.
The Turks and Caicos are so small that their entire population is only a drop in Canada’s yearly immigration stream, and we could afford infrastructure improbvements no prob. It would be far more doable, and serve as a practice manoeuvre.
You Canadians think you can just walk in and impose your values on the rest of the world? Your racist imperialistic policies are anathema to social justice in the developing world. There will be nationalist resistance to your every move.
