WAS: Re: Alternate history BUT discussing Canada and stuff (OTish)

I'm answering 'cause the question was asked, and though it is veering
dangerously off topic, there might still be some other interested viewers...

> Just a question...Back in the 80's I saw a TV program about Canada's
The
> general consensous of those asked, (excepting Quabeck...OK my spelling

FYI, that would be "Quebec".

if Canada did break up, they had no objections to joining
> the U.S. Then I heard the Maritime provences stating that they

Passed by a very thin majority. Less than a percent. Very, very
close...

But that wasn't a vote to break up Canada, per se. That was a vote by the
people of Quebec on whether they would attempt to negotiate separation from
Canada... But the question of what they were voting for was very unclear, and
many voted "yes" because they thought it would send a strong message to the
rest of Canada and the Canadian government to pay attention to Quebec's
issues...

The actual percentage of hardcore supporters of Quebec succession has, I
believe, never been above 40% of the Quebec population.

As to who said what about what would happen next, the "official" position was
to say that Canada wouldn't break up, so there was no point in discussing
breakup plans. It is unlikely that the rest of Canada would simply fall apart
and petition to join the US in bits and pieces. Some provinces might try to do
that if the situation in Canada became such that continuation of the country
in a new form was impossible, but several provinces might try to go it on
their own (or stay together in a
"mini-Canada"...)

> Is what I heard back then the truth?

Well, "truth" in this sort of case is a rather dodgy thing...

There has not yet been a single "truth" about all this mess here in Canada.
There has not been a vote by Quebec to succeed, and at the moment, support
for Quebec separation is waning rapidly.  So it might be a non-issue.

Certainly Canada is not any time soon going to be interested in joining the
US. Canada is, after all, the world's seventh largest industrial economy.
We're doing rather well, relative to much of the rest of the world. (Well, as
to that "7th largest" comment... that would be 7th largest national industrial
economy... I think that New York and California might have bigger
economies.... but they aren't measured separately...)

> Could someone in the know please clear this up for me?
gets
> bigger. The long term effects would be increased natural resources for

Canada Post certainly is not one of our more favoured institutions.....

Sometimes they have amazing service. Sometimes they have abominable service.
If it was consistant, it would be easier to deal with, but you just really
don't know what's going to happen...:)

One point here that people tend to not consider is whether or not the US would
WANT Canada to join up, or at least parts of it. If it were just the Maritime
provinces hoping to join, the US might want to give some serious thought...
these are the most economically depressed provinces in the country, heavily
dependant economically on transfer payments from the Federal Government to
maintain their provincial budgets. This is due to a wide variety of
historical, social, geographic, and economic factors over a long period of
time (not least of which has been a serious neglect in focus
by the Ontario/Quebec focussed Federal Governments of the post-WWII
period).

Until quite recently, most Canadians have tended to be rather more "left" in
their politics than what you commonly see in the US. Canadian
"Conservatives" have by and large maintained a right-centrist position,
the
"Liberal" party has been left-centrist, the "National Democratic Party"
is firmly leftist (strong Socialist origins), and that was the political scene
here until recently. The past decade has seen the growth of the "Reform"
party, which is a Western-focused, right wing party in some ways quite
similar to US Republicans (though I know that the Republicans cover a very
broad range of political opinion, just as the Democrats do). They have not
become a full player across Canada, and have just barely been able to hold
onto "Official Opposition" status in the House of Commons. The other major
party which emerged in the 1990's as a real player is the "Bloc Quebecois",
which is a Quebec Separatist party at the federal level, and who have no seats
outside of Quebec. Due to the vagaries of our electoral system, in the last
Parliament, the Liberals had a huge majority and the rightist vote was split
between the Conservatives and Reform. That left the Bloc Quebecois as the
party holding the second highest number of seats in the Commons, and the
Quebec separatist party became the Canadian Official Opposition. In the
current Parliament, the Reformers squeaked by into that status with the
addition of a couple of seats at the Liberals expense.

What does all this have to do with US accepance of Canada? Well, to put it
bluntly, we're more "left" than you are, and a large percentage of Canadian
voters would be scared to death by the Republican party. It is perfectly
conceivable that if all the Canadian provinces became US States, the current
"Balance of Power" in both the US Senate and House of Representatives might be
tipped heavily in favour of the Democrats, and could remain that way for
decades. I think the Republicans, particularly if they were in a majority
position in Congress OR had the presidency, would find it difficult to agree
to accept Canadian provinces into the US if it would result in their wholesale
usurpment from positions of power in the Government...

And this doesn't even *scratch* the problems of integrating the two together
in terms of complexity and costs. Though on the surface we appear to be
similar to the US in many ways, we are fundamentally different in most of the
important stuff. Different legal system, different electoral system, different
constition, different economic structure, different social welfare systems
(and I mean that in the broad sense, not the politically loaded "Welfare"
sense), and quite different cultures. Other people around the world may look
at Canadians and Americans and not see much difference, but *WE* see big
differences.

Canadians might be willing to join up with the US if that were the best
option in a series of bad choices (and don't take that the wrong way -
it certainly isn't meant to be insulting, but when looking at the disbandment
of your country it is understandable that people would not be happy about
it...), but would almost certainly prefer to stay independant if it is
possible to do so without really big drops in the standard of living, etc.

As far as the whole GZGverse CANON history goes, we know that Canada joined
into the NAC as a "founding member" and several of us have debated the nature
of how the NAC might function. Is it a confederation of states, with more or
less equal members based around the originating countries and states of the US
which came in separately (after the civil war) or is it a
British-run super-state, with an imposed peerage system and etc.  Most
of us tended toward some kind of "confederation of states" model.

The various people on-list who are creating their own alternative
histories of the GZGverse might want to consider what I've been talking about,
when they look at this little bit of the world. It is unlikely any time soon
that Canada would want to become part of the US, even in the face of Quebec
separation. Perhaps joining WITH the US in the creation of a new state of some
kind? Some have suggested the US and Canada breaking up into smaller bits,
forming a new grouping of entirely new states around common geography, for
example (ie the Pacific Northwest states and Provinces all getting together).

This might be fun from a story point of view, but I personally think the
Canada/UK/USA mega state (even if it isn't the NAC, per se) idea is more
likely. People might be tempted to have Quebec jump in with the FSE or equiv.,
but the Quebecois, unless their economy changes SIGNIFICANTLY in favour of
foreign trade, are completely reliant on trade with the US and the rest of
Canada as one of the prime foundations of their economy. I just don't buy the
idea that they would separate themselves entirely from North America by
saddling up with the Europeans, even if they might want to. They *aren't*
Europeans, even if they do speak French, and would be more likely to try to
negotiate some kind of
independant-but-protected-and-partners-with-the-US status, because they
wouldn't have much choice otherwise...

And of course, since what people are doing is writing FICTION, as someone else
pointed out, you can do whatever you like...:)

But that's my $0.02 point of view as someone who lives here in the middle of
it all.

Now what might be interesting is to investigate further the internal NAC
problems that come up with integrating all these diverse peoples (particularly
when the NAC snatches Mexico and South America and
incorporates hundreds of millions of non-US hispanics).  How does that
work in the "present" of the GZGverse? The NAC seems to come across in the
CANON histories as a pretty homogenious bunch (at least no internal struggle
is discussed). There has been a rash of people who have developed
their own pocket powers as break-offs from the NAC, and that's one of
the potential results. But maybe the NAC isn't as vanilla as it might be seen
to be, and maybe there is all kinds of internal troubles, that could be
exploited by them nefarious foreigners...

Anyway, it's late and I'm not going to subject the list to more rambling
:)