About that 51st State idea

Note

1. • Anyone not already knowledgeable about Canada and contemplating Mr. Trump's 51st state idea should consult at least Wikipedia's basic pages describing aspects of Canada's geography, population, governance, and economy before reading this essay.

      

   • Further, I take a very negative view of Canadian politics but anyone interested in the opposite view, that Canada is the positive and intentional construct of great men, should consult Conrad Black's epic 1,100 page History of Canada.

      

   • I'm Canadian - freedom of speech here is illusory, so please understand everything here that might look like a statement of fact as preceded by the legally somewhat protective "I believe that.." .

Canada is the world's second largest country with resources to rival those of Russia; has roughly California's population; two thirds of California's GDP; two mutually incompatible French and English speaking cultures; and, a federal government that tries to hold it all together by taxing the west to subsidize the east while loudly waving the flag and heavily subsidizing all major media. The idea that this could form a literal 51st state is absurd - but 16 or so states may eventually become possible because Canadians, more than 85% of whom live within two hundred miles of the American border, have, at least outside Quebec, American style educations and lifestyles, watch American TV, read American news sites, generally imagine themselves as having American rights, and vaguely understand that their relative poverty is an artifact of deliberate social policy, not a consequence of their own choices and actions.

Canada began when the English forced the merger of incompatible British and French colonies clustered along the St. Lawrence as a bulwark against American expansion northward and allowed the second sons and other detritus of empire that owned and managed those colonies to continue doing so. Their heirs then developed what is now Canada more or less in the tradition of European lesser nobility -i.e. by the muddling along of those who, for the most part, simply go along to get along. The result, heavily influenced by over a century of anti-Americanism whipped on by liberal politicians and other charlatans trying to gain or hold local power, is a country that is more of a captive market for a few leading families than it is a nation.

History and progressive social control have consequences: a straight-up Canada wide vote on joining in either an economic or political union with the United States would have virtually no chance of even 20% of the vote - for three main reasons:

1. The negative campaign would be led and financed by the people who benefit from confederation and see nothing but competition and loss of social position in any form of union. Since these people effectively control the careerist (liberal), idealogue (NDP), and pretend separtiste (Parti Quebecois) strata of Canada's progressives; have near total media control; and would be building on a long history of using both anti-americanism and Quebec nationalism to ward off political change, their position is nearly unassailable.

    

   In the early days of the country the patriotic whip covering for anti-americanism was "for king and country" - after all the united empire loyalists moved to Nova Scotia to escape the American revolution - but that has been replaced over the last forty years or so by the hurrah that "our" Canadian health care system is morally better as well as cheaper and more effective than the American system. As a result the progressive attack on any campaign on union, political or economic, with the United States will feature the usual attacks on individual American political figures, but mostly focus on protecting Canada's socialized healthcare from rabidly capitalist Americans eager to bankrupt innocent Canadian families.

   In reality, however, free healthcare in Canada is most nearly comparable to the VA: extremely expensive, very slow, and effective only for the simplest and most routine care. (Largely because, I think, making government the health care customer reduces the patient to an unwanted cost, so the paperwork is meticulous, but the patient's welfare essentially immaterial.)

   Alberta, for example, has about 4.3 million people and will spend in excess of about $31 billion, or more than $7,200 per person, on "free" hospital and primary medical services this year - but over 200,000 Albertans have no access to primary care, even simple services require long waits, there is nearly no quality control, and it sometimes seems as if the health care professionals working in the system are deliberately kept powerless to achieve change by the unrelenting application of non-patient related job stress; limited compensation; difficult working conditions; and politically co-opted union leadership.

    

2. pro votes from the prairie provinces and extra-urban areas in the rest of Canada would be overwhelmed by negative votes within the major urban areas where overwhelming media and educational anti-americanism would join with the isolation of the individual and consequent reliance on limited, but emotionally freighted, information characteristic of large urban settings, to predictably deliver a "blue" result; and,

    

3. the myth of the polite Canadian hides an applicable deeper reality: the go along to get along mentality means that no provincial population except perhaps Albertans will vote for significant political change.

A Canada wide vote, whether on economic or political union, is, however, extremely unlikely ever to be called because that would require positive national leadership and a coherent national vision of what the outcomes could be - a level of clarity Canada is not noted for. What is far more likely, in contrast, is that the country either continues to muddle along or breaks up in one of two ways:

1. a conservative federal government elected largely without representation from Quebec becomes a target of opportunity for a new and charismatic parti Quebecois leader who sees personal advantage, and liberal funding, in the attack. That escalates until original Quebec (the heavily urbanized stretch from Montreal to Quebec City along the St. Lawrence) accidently votes for independence because the rest of the province largely sits out the vote; or,

    

2. Alberta votes to give the provincial government authority to negotiate an economic union with the United States thinking this a tool with which to extract fair treatment from the federal government, but the so called "laurentian elites" who govern Canada think its a bluff and fight any effort to effect change. As a result a referendum on the proposed union passes easily in Alberta, the federal government proves unable to negotiate a way out of the impasse, and both Saskatchewan and Manitoba soon follow Alberta's lead to economic Union with the United States.

The first scenario, in which the original Quebec colony tries to go it alone produces long term stability as Quebec enters a period of genteel poverty before eventually becoming a major north American tourist destination for people wanting to experience 19th century Europe; the three original maritime provinces become poorer before seeking economic union with the United States where they are recognized as Finland with more resources, larger markets, and better ports; the rest of Canada prospers mightily as power and money move north and west; and, hardly anyone in Newfoundland notices the change.

The second scenario, in contrast, produces long term instability outside the three prairie provinces as Quebec and the maritimes, deprived of the western cash cow, see no further value in the federation and embark on a series of increasingly bad trade-offs between nationalism and economic self-interest; southern Ontario and south western British Columbia choose to remain isolated and defiant but quickly lose their hinterlands to Manitoba and Alberta respectively; and the territories, along with most of northern Ontario and Quebec, try to maintain an indecisive compromise between a kind of forlorn independence, hooking up with Newfoundland and Labrador to the east, Alaska to the west, and forming regional associations with the three prairie entities to the south.