With Canada vs. the US, we’re one small country competing against one large country. And we have zero legal authority over them, and never will, 51st State rhetoric to the contrary. And we’ve seen what that means: one guy gets a bee in his bonnet about the price of milk, and billions of dollars in trade is put in danger. And the best we can hope for is if this time, when we ask them to play nicely, he won’t just go “LoL no!”, and call us nasty.
But if Canada were to join the EU, we’d be one moderate sized country among many, and would have similar influence over EU policies as any other. There wouldn’t be just one guy who can tell us to take it or leave it. The dynamic of the relationship would be fundamentally different. “The EU” isn’t a monolithic single entity the way the US is.
And there’s no risk that the EU as a whole will be run by a deranged lunatic.
I believe that trade relations with the US will normalize once Trump is out of office, but establishing mutually beneficial reciprocal trade relations with the EU as well is always a good thing.
But if Canada were to join the EU, we’d be one moderate sized country among many, and would have similar influence over EU policies as any other.
Not that it would happen, but by population, Canada would be fifth after Germany, France, Italy and Spain, and entitled to somewhere around 55-60 members of the European Parliament, and with quite a heft in the population-weighted component of the ‘Qualified Majority Vote’ in the Council of Ministers (the final legislative body).
Exactly. I don’t expect full membership to actually happen, and almost certainly not in my lifetime, but this is why I wouldn’t run screaming if it were to happen. Establish some kind of not-quite membership now, and in a few decades, let’s see what happens. Lots of Canadians were worried about NAFTA at first, but now it’s central to our trade policies. I could see working more closely with the EU evolving in the same way.
To either amplify or disagree with this: unemployment is different here than in the States. There’s something of a social safety net here (in Canada), and people are a lot more relaxed about losing a job. 7% is catastrophic in the US, here it’s suboptimal (said the employed guy).
The big issue is housing. We need lots of it. And it would be lovely if not everyone wanted to live in Toronto or Vancouver (or, one assumes, Calgary).
As already mentioned, in the US health care tied to employment is a huge issue. In Canada it’s mostly irrelevant.
True, though for purely selfish reasons while my house goes up for sale, I want to see sky-high housing prices! I’m not happy that the federal government will be sending billions to my town to help reduce the cost of new construction.
It’s hard to directly compare economic macros between US and Canada for many reasons. It’s the same thing with the Cons comparing our GDP to the US without including the fact that our debt to GDP ratio is significantly lower. Trying to explain the whole TFW issue in two paragraphs is difficult!
This, although probably said in jest, is a real problem. “We’d like affordable housing!” “Cool, how about here?” “Uh, not where it will impact my property values.”
And this isn’t a left/right thing. This is a “you know you’re talking about my retirement plan?” thing.
Geography isn’t nothing, though. The historical close relationship between Canada and the US is mostly due to geography: The two countries being physically close together makes travel and trade between them very easy, which in turn causes similarity in culture.
True, but the increasing idiotisification of US politics is now creating bigger and bigger divides between the countries, the second term of the narcissistic Orange Peril being a historic low point where there’s no longer any concept of facts or reason, or any ability to recognize the mutually beneficially nature of harmonious trade relations.
Canada, like other US first-world trading partners and allies, has had to distance itself from the US and start to form new economic and military alliances. Things may begin to change later, long after the Orange One is gone, but it will take a long, long time before there is renewed trust in the US and it ceases to be one of the most ridiculed and hated nations on earth.
Iceland and Norway have an economic arrangement (EEA) with the EU. This makes more sense than pretending our interests fully align. When Carney talks of preserving sovereignty, he means Canada wants to set its own rules regarding digital things, packaging standards, English-French affairs, immigration, taxes, a million six sigma trivialities. And in many of these things, it makes sense to have some alignment with the US although this calculus may be changing.
In other words - more trade, more middle power unity, democratic values - but for Canada several topics are politically off limits. These do not include every trade sector, but things all parties in Canada agree on as priorities.
Oh, absolutely. The US is unreliable, and it makes perfect sense for Canada to seek closer relations with other countries now. I was just using the old US-Canada relations as an example of why the EU might want to restrict itself geographically.
I would love to be able to consider a smaller city. If not for the fact that, well, most others are pretty car-dependent and the jobs in my field are seemingly mostly in the Toronto area (or possibly Quebec, where we can’t relocate, initially at least, because I got PR for my husband based on the idea that we would not live in Quebec). If I ultimately resettle in Canada, I want to do it somewhere where we can age in place, including to the point where we are not comfortable driving.
Yes: for one thing, we’re a metric country (like the EU) but most of our supply chain is tied to the US, so building materials, appliances, and all sorts of things are still sold in non-metric units (inches, square feet, etc.). Butter is usually sold in one-pound blocks, though it’s labelled only in metric. It will be interesting to see if a closer partnership with the EU and / or lessening trade with the US will change this.
i lived in Toronto for 20 years before moving to Montreal. It’s a statement, not a judgement (btw, I haven’t driven a car in 20 years. I’m on your side re: car-dependency).
Oh, understood. Mine was a statement, too. Initially we were considering various smaller cities in Ontario but I don’t see how we could realistically make that work over the long haul without being car-dependent or possibly even needing to acquire a second car. (We have one now but don’t depend on it for commuting, and I don’t want to be in the position of depending on a car for commuting. These days it’s mostly used for weekend errands and the occasional road trip.)
Well, the “economic arrangement” that Norway and Iceland have with the EU involves participation in Schengen and full integration into the Single Market, so Norway and Iceland don’t get to set their own rules regarding digital things, packaging standards, immigration and many other things.
All that means, though, is that the EEA is not an off-the-shelf agreement that will meet Canada’s needs. It doesn’t mean that no Canada-EU agreement could meet Canada’s needs.
But “Canada’s needs” have to confront a difficult tension. On the one hand, the US is not the reliable or friendly partner that it once was. On the other hand the US is very big, it’s right there, and the gravity model of trade tells us that Canada-US trade is always going to be much more significant for Canada than Canada-EU trade. No deal with the EU is ever going to change that.
So Canada will have to do some hard, realistic thinking about what a Canada-EU agreement can do to ameliorate the difficulties it faces as a result of the decay of the US.
Norway, Switzerland and Iceland agreeing to EU standards for many things is not an obstacle - they do a lot of local trade. For Canada, including packaging in English and French, it is a different kettle of fish. First, Canada will continue to trade heavily with the United States sinply because of proximity and market size. Second, factories already use known standards and are not going to go through expensive retooling during a difficult time. Third, getting agreement between 28 countries is as easy as it sounds. This is why Carney is seeking an associate membership, which I hope increases trade (as Canada has done with many countries recently) but is probably largely symbolic.
If the US becomes and stays stupid / evil / protectionist enough, there will be negligible US-Canada trade. Because the US government prevents it.
Canada’s largest natural trading partners will then be the EU, Japan, & China. With southeast Asia as a whole somewhere in there too. My bet is the gravity model will then make the EU #1 of that short list.
Conversely, if the USA promptly and thoroughly repudiates trump, MAGA, and all things Fascist, then you will perhaps be right.
My money is on the USA doing no such sensible thing.
Canada does about 60% of its international trade with the US, 8.5% with the EU, 8% with China and 2% with Japan.
The reason for this is geographic. Not even Trump, despite his delusions on the question, can alter the facts of geography.
Unless the US becomes totally isolationist, fixates irrationally on self-sufficiency, and basically stops trading internationally at all (and, spoiler, this is not going to happen) it will always be Canada’s biggest trading partner, and by a large margin.
I’m not happy that the federal government will be sending billions to my town to help reduce the cost of new construction.