Canadian here. Interesting points. I feel most Canadians would be cautiously open to the idea. How do EU regular people feel?
Canadian here, yes please
Article is too long...
It'd be a little weird as Canada is not in Europe but other than that it'd be a perfect fit. Much better fit than Turkey or even Hungary...
EU here, yes pls. Iโve never been there but Iโve always loved the idea of Canada. Hospitality, human rights, healthcare, โฆ all values we should hold high and unite over.
Australia as well please, love to join the grand EU project. Anything that brings people closer together in a fractured world is a good thing.
This would be wonderful!
As Canada isnโt in Europe, some renaming has to happenโฆ perhaps Freedom Union?
I'm Canadian. Sign me up! I remember as a lad in the 1960's that commercials on TV compared Canada to the nordic countries, not america. That's right around the start of "capitalization" when "business administration" students were pushed out of colleges in huge numbers and everything slowly went to hell.
I like the idea, although our provinces would have to give up quite a bit of their sovereignty which would be a hard sell politically. We have more trade barriers between our provinces than the EU has.
We're a good sized market, but not so big that the EU would be willing to put up with 10 exceptions to their rules.
Better start practicing your Canadian then.
After reading the article, I am still not sure whether that's a good idea because such an expansion likely comes with additional conflicts. Wouldn't mind a EU & Friends though. In general Canada has been very stable, reasonable and constructive in the last years.
All for it
Ooh, can you imagine the freakout that would happen in Washington?
Itโs going to happen after Albania!
I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here: I'm against this because many European projects are incompatible with Canada. In some parts, Canada's infrastructure is as bad as the USA's. Look at public transport, for example. Everything is car centric, and if you're not rich enough to own a car, you're basically excluded from public life, I don't mean this in an elitist type of way. Even Germany has significantly better public transport than Canada. Many of the other networking projects such as TEN-T or ETCS do not make sense as it is quite literally separated from the EU. Common standards are only useful when everyone agrees to use them. But as Canada would be the only EU state on the North American continent, they would be the only ones using it. Enhanced political cooperation and trade is always a positive thing, but the EU is more than just FTAs and other diplomatic pleasantries. IMHO.
I also like it that their King Charles III has no say in it while some other parts of the commonwealth left EU in recent history.
To join EU, a country needs to comply with several conditions. The conditions for economical and political stability are OK, I assume. But Canada would need to adapt to EU laws. How big is the gap between the laws in Canada and what EU requires?
Is it anything that stops EU and Canada from agreeing on free trade, open borders etc. even if Canada is not a part of EU? That would be weaker since one side can elect a weirdo and suddenly stop all agreements but it could be faster to implement and Canada could join later.
Although I'd welcome the idea, there is an important caveat : Canada is a financial sovereign now but would have to give that up. All countries in euroland use a foreign currency called "the euro". We have a central bank but no central government. Members are expected to finance themselves on the private market. Where as today Canadian government can buy any local goods and services it wants as long as they're priced in canadian dollars. EU is great but needs to fix its design faults before we can expand again
Not sure I want the EU to share a border with the US
As a European, I have no interest in Canada joining the EU. It's not even in Europe, nor near it, nor an overseas possession of its countries.
It'd also give us a large border with Fascistland.
However, I do think we could have association partnership with Canada - basically the closest to being a member state in all but name, membership, and voting rights. I also want labour rights to remain protected; and thus to ward off the influence of techbros.
I was partially in favour, but this article changed my mind. There are many ways to cooperate on everything if this is the point. In the article there is little understanding of what the EU is
I donโt think that will work. We canโt have centralized decisions being made for Canada in Brussels and through consensus with a bunch of countries who we donโt even share a continent with. That being said, we exist because of mother France and father Britain (who unceremoniously left the family). So we will ALWAYS be aligned with Europe.
No thanks. We don't need another layer of bureaucrats to make everything even more complex and slow.
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