A case could be made for the United States and Canada to merge, with Canada's provinces and territories becoming federal states. But this would be rejected by many Canadians, particularly among the self-anointed, yet ignorant, elites of Central and Eastern Canada. But that the two countries have no reasonable way around growing closer together and becoming more integrated on economic, labour and trade matters is an absolute given. Canada depends for its economic and trading health on the US. If the US were to suddenly disappear, or shrivel away under the weight of the recession, bringing its purchasing power and consumer demand to zero, Canada would die a slow and painful death too, like a person drowning or someone whose air supply was being cut off gradually.
Around eighty-five per cent of Canada's goods and services head for the United States. Despite some respectable activity with the Asian-Pacific region, Europe and a few other parts of the world, Canada's economy could not sustain itself if it weren't for its main customer, the US. It is for that reason that Canadians have every right to worry about the various protectionist clauses popping up in recent legislation before the US Congress as well as about the US administration's decision to firm up the US-Canadian border – contrary to the promise President Barack Obama made to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on his recent visit to Ottawa. When the US begins to shut non-American companies out of public tenders and other major areas, while reinforcing its border to the north, it's not only detrimental to the entire global economy and international efforts to stem the recession, but it's also particularly damaging to, and virtually fatal for, the Canadian economy.
It doesn't help either country's economic well-being when an ignorant and uninformed Homeland Security secretary tells Canadians, within a week or so of Obama making a very different promise to Canada, to face up to having a “real border” and accept this “change of culture”. Nor is it helpful when the US slaps a protectionist 10-percent tariff on Canadian lumber in contravention of NAFTA rules.
Europe has done away with its borders and allows goods, services, people and capital to move and flow freely. Even though, from a European perspective, the elimination of national borders and nation-states has been a major mistake that has given a boost to criminals from Eastern Europe and their daily pillaging across Western Europe and that will therefore produce future conflicts, perhaps even wars, the United States and Canada would be well advised to copy the European model. Europe needs to tone it way down, but the US and Canada need to step it up big time.
In terms of business, trade and labour, the US and Canada must become one. When an American loses his job, he should be able to accept a job offer in Canada without even so much as showing a passport to border guards, and vice versa. Goods and services from Canada should be shipped and sold to the US like domestic goods and services. At the same time, NAFTA should not only be renegotiated, but scrapped entirely. With Mexico now a more dangerous place to visit than Iraq or Afghanistan, while serving as a conduit for even more vicious and violent gangs and criminal organizations from Central and South America, such as the MS-13 gang (the degree of violence increases drastically the further south one moves), there shouldn't be any doubt about the necessity of sealing off the US-Mexican border as quickly as possible. Yet, as Americans living along the Mexican border report, the current US administration appears to have halted all work on building a fence and wall to the south, while, in a misguided move, it throws its resources at solidifying its border with Canada, which is now being policed by drone planes as well.
Canada and the US must form a union in terms of external immigration, trade and security. The two countries need each other now more than ever, and this will be even more so the case in the years and decades to come. The current penchant for protectionism in the US, which seems to be growing almost daily, is utterly misplaced. At the same time that the Obama administration is reaching out to countries far away, some of them hostile, it appears to be working hard on suffocating Canada slowly but surely – as if to ready it for a quick and inexpensive takeover when the time is right. In fact, more and more Canadians are beginning to suspect that the US administration's promises of ensuring security of energy supplies are really code for grabbing Canada's oil and water resources. Indeed, the only way for Obama to keep his campaign promises within the stated timeframe would be for the US to take over Canada's resources, such as Québec hydro power or Alberta's oil sands. Unfortunately, with the signals coming out of the US, this scenario is becoming more and more likely.
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