Here's what would happen if Canada joined the European Union
The idea of Canada joining the EU has got renewed attention after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened the country with high tariffs
The idea of Canada joining the EU has got renewed attention after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened the country with high tariffs
I would laugh myself to death.
We grant you the rank of EU member, but you are not in Europe.
Edit: For those of you taking this seriously, it's just a play on a stupid star wars meme
What do you mean? We have a land border with Denmark.
If that's not good enough, maybe Sweden would be willing to part with one of their 267,570 islands. Or at least half of one... if we took the inside half, then Sweden wouldn't have to worry about losing any of the EEZ.
Neither is Greenland.
We can pass a law saying Canada is part of Europe and Google, Apple, and Microsoft will change their maps.
Doesn't matter. The requirement is to be "a European country", not "a country in Europe". What "European" really means has been left deliberately ambiguous.
Eh, continents are entirely a socially-constructed category. I mean, how can Mexican America and South America be one continent when there's no land route between them, yet Europe and Asia can be two continents? The Americas are on different techtonic plates, which similarly is enough to earn India the designation of subcontinent. And where's the cut-off between big island and continent? Bigger than Greenland, and smaller than Australia is all we can say.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that with just a quick redefinition of the continents, which already don't make sense, Canada can be in Europe.
People float the idea of Australia joining the EU every so often too, but much the same we'd be a second class country basically handing money over to Germany and France for the sake of it.
Yeah, that's absolutely not how this works.
This should totally happen. I struggle to think of anything that would be made worse by adopting European laws and customs.
Canada and Mexico should form the American Union and immediately pincer the United States, economically and literally.
Canada is the number 9 economy in the world and Mexico is number 15. This would be a significant body. They could add in Cuba and REALLY piss off the US.
Canada and mexico should form a union that's called Super America. And america isn't part of it.
Is it still a pincer is it's A-B-A-B? Don't forget Alaska.
No, that’s scissors
National Post is a conservative newspaper owned by Americans.
Yup. Which is why this only makes me want to Canada to be an EU member even more.
Remember, folks, this newspaper is very biased due to its ownership.
Canada... Northwest Europe.
shouldnt eu then be called atlantic union or something
Nah - Canada can Naxit since we have an extensive land border with Denmark. And nearly every Canadian could make the grueling cross Atlantic swim to France.
Maybe like North Atlantic Treaty Organization union
They should annex Mexico too and call it the North American - European Union. The NAEU.
Could you imagine the trading asset Mexico would mean for the European Union? Plus, cracking down on drug trafficking across the Atlantic would be easier.
Is there anything in EU regulations that mandates technical standards that would be difficult to replace on a Canada-wide scale, such as 220V/50Hz mains electricity, RF spectrum, TV broadcasting formats and such? How much of a mess would it make to split these into “EU West” and “EU East”, and to balance that with there being a notional single market (“what do you mean the TV I bought in Toronto won’t work in Prague?”)
Aviation, Shipping, Telecom, there's loads of regulations in the EU..
it isn't the existence of regulations in the EU that annoys me, as standards, when done right, massively-reduce the "tax" of needless-waste, & needless-harm, ..
.. rather, it is the standards being decided by things other than globally-elegant effectiveness & globally-elegant efficiency.
Politics has NO proper place in government, yet humankind has handed the world to be outright-RULED by the coalition between political-machiavellianism-of-parties & moneyarchy, using their friend legalism for leverage against Justice ( the fight between legalism & moral-law is millenia-old ), & now physical-force/bullets has sided with the extremists of all sides, to "help" the world resolve to their victory, too..
Sooo many dimensions of this stuff going-on, now..
Anti-strategy, all of that.
No matter: The Great Filter should finish doing its thing by the end of this century, & if anybody is left alive, then they will have grown-up, completely, as a population.
if, though..
.. sigh ..
_ /\ _
Is this something that can happen? Like, realistically?
If you've been paying attention over the last 2 weeks, literally anything can happen at any time. We live in the age of miracles and horrors.
No
Things like that seem to take years. Meanwhile in any sane world you’d expect US to return to sanity in four years
Anybody who believes that Trump will tolerate any 2028-election to toss him out from power .. is foolish.
Sorry, but it's true.
The 2024-election was the FINAL chance the Dems had, & the fluffed themselves in their Hopium, & when it failed, they make-believe that they're somehow going to be "allowed" to take the country back, later??
Idiocy.
It's too late.
Construct survival in the actual remaining-context, & then US Civil War Part2 ( which should begin around 2028, -/+ 1y ) will be more-survivable.
Remain within Hopium, & .. getting butchered in the coming tsunami-of-violence in North America becomes starkly more-likely.
I'd prefer people be realists, & survive..
Kaizen,
_ /\ _
That already happened four years ago. Since then there has been an insurrection, women has lost rights and a former President was convicted of fraud and was indicted for many more crimes. The American people voted that criminal into power despite knowing all of that. The US got a taste of sanity and decided they didn't like that and chose batshit insanity.
To join the European Union the country must be located in Europe. I don't think Canada will fill up this criteria.
Apparently it's super easy to change the maps. If the Gulf of Mexico can be renamed, we can rename the top half of North America to West Europe.
Saint Pierre and Miquelon is part of the EU and 19km off the coast of Canada.
Move around some tectonic plates and they'll be here in no time. (Canadians, you might want to get under a sturdy table for this one.)
“I’m a little bit dismayed that this unrealistic debate about EU membership kind of distracts from the things that could really be done to intensify the relationship,” said Hurrelmann. “How could we try to speed up processes of regulatory alignment under CETA? How could we encourage European investment in Canada in areas such as critical raw materials?… Those, I think, are the kinds of debates for which there’s really a lot of potential. And the Canada-EU economic relationship can definitely become closer and can be intensified, and that would be beneficial for both sides, but not through Canada’s membership in the EU.”
Hmm. I'm not actually sure that's a problem. Even if we say we want to, the first steps are doing things like aligning regulations and setting up free movement, as this article goes into.
But yeah, even if we make EU Canada work it's a long way off.
Yeah I didn't get that part either. If we say we want to be part of the EU and in the end we only improve trade with the EU why is that worse then saying we only want to improve trade relations and only improve trade relations? Don't get why this guys would be "dismayed" unless he doesn't really want more trade with the EU.
Transatlantic Union go!
Well, we'd have to redraw a bunch of maps, so at least it'd one up the dumb Gulf of Mexico distraction.
This seems pretty silly. There are tons of intermediary states Canada could reach without the weird torturing of geography. As the linked piece acknowledges way at the bottom, incidentally.
Imagine if the United States of America had a state that wasn't part of America. It would be completely crazy! How could it ever make sense?
I mean, picture it: some place, say somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, maybe some independent Polynesian country, just gets made into a state. We wouldn't be the United States of America anymore!
;-)
The European Union is just a name, a label, I don't think it would too much of a drama to change the name for something more inclusive, even if we do not change the name, who cares anyway? There are already some overseas territories in South America that technically are part of the EU like someone else pointed.
It's not just an issue with location. Canadians tend to think they're a lot more... culturally and politically European than they are.
And, again, there are lots of other alternatives before having to incorporate a whole-ass North American country with a landmass twice as big as the entire EU and located ten time zones away into a political and economic union designed to let trucks move things around easily.
I don't see this. Greenland is right next to it so it would just be a westward extension. Australia would be wierd but canada fits right in.
Why would we? The european Union already has existing territory in Latein america, so a north American Country joining aint ruled Out.
*technically, thanks to France, we already have a Union, where the sun never sets. If it we're Not for the fact, that those other territories are Not recognized as being an integral territory by France , therefore Not being within EU jurisdiction. I guess, If a certain orange would try to coerce France into selling those territories, this opinion of france would change fast 😉
Agreed.
The idea of Vancouver being in the EU is crazy since it's halfway around the world.
Although there is French Polynesia and other overseas territories that are part of the EU so I guess it's not that weird.
