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I used to be more strongly of the view that having the U.S. right next door was a huge economic boon to Canada that we'd be quite a bit poorer without.
I still think it's beneficial though after believing this made us slightly better off than Australia (all alone out there) in recent years that country's slow but steady distancing itself from Canada in terms of prosperity has led me to think twice about this.
So while I am still glad we have the U.S. as a neighbour, there is now quite a bit of evidence that suggests that Canada all by itself might have been just fine (like Australia) without its behemoth of a neighbour.
If we didn't have the history we do, we wouldn't be Canada. Living next to the US just is how it is.
This is true as well.
English-speaking Canada (which is most of Canada) is arguably a "societal offshoot" of the U.S.
It's hard to conceive of its existence without first having the 13 colonies to the south, and then those colonies rebelling against Britain, the Loyalists coming north, etc.
If it was not next to US, would Canada be more like a cold version of Australia? (Have more of its own distinct national identity/ culture).
In terms of cultural distinctiveness, I talk a lot about this on here but I have come around to the idea that the level of cultural distinctiveness people want and aspire to is mostly the one that they end up having.
Places like Quebec and Newfoundland appear more foreign relative to the U.S. for reasons of their own, and having all those Americans in the next country over does not appear to have prevented them from establishing these identities and keeping them alive.
Most of the rest of Canada seems less obviously different from the U.S. (at least superficially) and it would seem that the people living there are quite comfortable with that. If they were not, yes it would be a challenge to hammer out something really really different (especially after decades and centuries of dovetailing so much stuff with the neighbours to the south), but certainly there are a number of ways that they could express their difference more and which are open to them but that they choose not to exercise.
The fact that they don't leads me to conclude that there is a certain contentment there.
I used to be more strongly of the view that having the U.S. right next door was a huge economic boon to Canada that we'd be quite a bit poorer without.
I still think it's beneficial though after believing this made us slightly better off than Australia (all alone out there) in recent years that country's slow but steady distancing itself from Canada in terms of prosperity has led me to think twice about this.
So while I am still glad we have the U.S. as a neighbour, there is now quite a bit of evidence that suggests that Canada all by itself might have been just fine (like Australia) without its behemoth of a neighbour.
Australia is highly dependent upon Asia for trade. I don't see your point at all. It is extremely beneficial to Canada to be adjacent to the world's largest economy and to have that country's systems harmonized with it. Australia's trade with Asia is almost exclusively natural resource based. Canada's trade with the United States is a combination of natural resources, services, and product exports. Not to mention that Canada's trade with the U.S. is free.
Canadian delusions of grandeur never cease to amaze me. 'We don't need Britain!' 'We don't need the States!' Meanwhile, the population and economy are smaller than the State of California.
Australia is highly dependent upon Asia for trade. I don't see your point at all. It is extremely beneficial to Canada to be adjacent to the world's largest economy and to have that country's systems harmonized with it. Australia's trade with Asia is almost exclusively natural resource based. Canada's trade with the United States is a combination of natural resources, services, and product exports. Not to mention that Canada's trade with the U.S. is free.
Canadian delusions of grandeur never cease to amaze me. 'We don't need Britain!' 'We don't need the States!' Meanwhile, the population and economy are smaller than the State of California.
It's not delusions of grandeur, it's a hypothetical discussion.
If Australia trades so much with Asia, why couldn't Canada (in the absence of the U.S. next door) trade more with Europe, for example? Canada has more plentiful and diverse natural resources than Australia does, and Europe is closer to Canada than Asian markets are to Oz, and it is also consistently wealthier than Asia is.
It's not delusions of grandeur, it's a hypothetical discussion.
If Australia trades so much with Asia, why couldn't Canada (in the absence of the U.S. next door) trade more with Europe, for example? Canada has more plentiful and diverse natural resources than Australia does, and Europe is closer to Canada than Asian markets are to Oz, and it is also consistently wealthier than Asia is.
Australia exports a bunch of raw natural resources like copper ore. The vast majority of that goes to Asian economies. The Asian economies have seen enormous economic growth, which has played an enormous role in why Australia has not had a recession in more than 26 years—longer than I have been alive. Australia is weathier than Asia for a variety of reasons—a primary one being that it is an Anglo country and our nations consistently rank near the top of the Human Development Index and rankings of per capita GDP.
Canada and the European Union signed a free trade agreement in 2017. Let's see what impact that will have on Canada's international trade composition. The Middle East and Scandinavia have Europe pretty much covered when it comes to crude oil—Canada's largest export by dollar value. Canada exporting oil to Europe or Asia is pretty much logistically impossible. Canada's automobile industry—Canada's second largest export by dollar value—churns out vehicles that really only appeal to the North American market. These vehicles are largely manufactured on behalf of the Big Three (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, General Motors, and The Ford Motor Company). Refined petroleum is pretty much exclusively exported to the United States. The United States is now an exporter of oil. Canada has been very vulnerable to the U.S. energy boom.
Point being—Canada is not going to be able to out-compete the United States on any level and Europe is not buying what it is selling. Canada needs the United States. I suppose if the U.S. was non-existent and was part of Latin America, Canada could trade with them. However, it is doubtful that a Latin American country would have enough purchasing power to fuel Canada's economy to the extent that it is fueled by the U.S. economy.
Hiruko, first point - Canada is not trying to out-compete the United States on any level. It's a ridiculous idea and for anyone to even think that's what Canada is wanting or hoping to do is evidence of not knowing or understanding much about Canada and its values. The obsession with "dollar value" and the aggressive competitiveness chip that carries it sits solely on America's shoulders, not on Canada's.
re: all of those countries you've just mentioned in your above post - you seem to not be aware that Canada has already been conducting all manner of international export/import and other trade with all of them that you mentioned and many, many more around the world that you never mentioned. Some of it is small scale, some large scale trade but this has been going on for many, many decades long before you were born.
Yes, America is Canada's biggest trade partner and ally at this time which is only natural of course considering the very convenient proximity to each other and our shared history of growing pains together on this continent since colonization. But you're mistaken if you've been thinking that America is the only one or that there are only a very few countries that Canada has been doing business with for the past couple of centuries or more.
Australia is highly dependent upon Asia for trade. I don't see your point at all. It is extremely beneficial to Canada to be adjacent to the world's largest economy and to have that country's systems harmonized with it. Australia's trade with Asia is almost exclusively natural resource based. Canada's trade with the United States is a combination of natural resources, services, and product exports. Not to mention that Canada's trade with the U.S. is free.
Canadian delusions of grandeur never cease to amaze me. 'We don't need Britain!' 'We don't need the States!' Meanwhile, the population and economy are smaller than the State of California.
And there ya go, making our point for us all by your widdle self.
And yet Canada scores in the top ten on every single metric of measurement one would desire to score higher in than the economic gorilla beneath us.
Good one.
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