Canada

Canada doesn't really have a reason for existing, and many Canadians are realizing that. Created out of spite against the United States by the British Empire and the United Empire Loyalists ("Tories") who fled the United States after the Revolutionary War, English Canada has long harbored hatred and jealous resentments against the United States. But the French of Canada never shared English Canada's animosity to the U.S., and never understood why speakers of English around them should be in separate countries while speakers of French should be forced to cohabit with SOME of the speakers of English but FORBIDDEN to cohabit with the others.

To French-speaking Canadians ("Canadiens", "Francophones","Quebecois" or "Acadiens"), the present border makes no sense. To them, if there is to be any border at all in North America above the Rio Grande, it should be around Quebec, separating English from French. They are right.

English Canada is an empire held together by logical absurdities, lies, and tariffs. The absurdities and lies start with the assertion that Canadians and Americans are fundamentally and massively different, so must be in separate countries, but English Canadians and French Canadians are so similar that they must be in the same country! No sane person believes that.

The lies then proceed, that Canada is a 'kinder, gentler' country than the United States (we are to ignore the irony that this phrase, so often used nowadays in Canada, is a quote taken from an American President (the first President Bush), speaking not of Canada but of the improved U.S. that he said he wanted to create). We are to believe that Canada's cradle-to-grave paternalist government, semi-socialist economy, and collectivist culture are far 'nicer' and better than the 'cold-hearted' government, 'cut-throat' capitalist economy, and meanly individualistic culture of the United States. In actuality, parts of the U.S. (e.g., New York City) are fully as "socialist" as Canada, while retaining a culture of individual accomplishment. And adjoining regions of Canada and the U.S. are essentially indistinguishable from each other, save for trivial differences produced only by the fact of different governments — for instance, blue collection mailboxes in the U.S. as against red in Canada.

Canadians by the hundreds of thousands have left Canada for the United States. Over a million Canadians overwinter in the U.S., and never feel that they are surrounded by foreigners. Canadian actors are cast as members of American families, and nobody, in either country, spots them as absurd imposters who stick out like a sore thumb from genuine Americans.

To the extent there ever were significant differences between English Canadians and Americans, in speech, in customs, in mindset, those differences have been eroded by the emergence of a transnational culture powered by a common language and conveyed by film, television, audio and video recordings, magazines, the Internet, and millions of face-to-face personal encounters in travel.

"Canadianness" is now seen by millions of Canadians as patent nonsense foisted upon them by years of nationalist indoctrination in the schools. Even the young actor who mouthed stirring but essentially empty Canadian-nationalist sentiments in a diatribe for a hugely famous beer commercial, has moved to the United States! With him, before him, and following him are hundreds of thousands of the "best and brightest" of English Canada, who know that Canada is not significantly different from the United States except that it is poorer, less ambitious, less glamorous, and far less interesting.

The best Canadians want to live in a first-rate country, but Canadian nationalists eschew "imitating" the qualities that have made the United States first-rate, so will maintain Canada as a second-rate preserve for the unambitious as long as they control things. Fortunately, Canada is self-destructing, because Canadians are waking up.

French Canadians no longer buy the nonsensical lie that they must accept domination by English Canadians to save themselves from domination by Americans! They have taken charge of their own affairs economically as well as politically, have brought down unemployment and turned a troubling budget deficit into a budget surplus, and are now ready to take on the world, within NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement). Quebec businessmen are fully as sophisticated as English Canadian businessmen and can speak for themselves with the economic power brokers of New York and Chicago. They don't need an English-Canadian intermediary — and boss.

Western Canada, that region from the western edge of Ontario to the Pacific, has long been tired of domination by "Central Canada" (Ontario and Quebec) and wants more autonomy. Central (or Eastern) Canada has resisted their demands for a "Triple-E Senate" — Equal (each province having the same number of Senators), Elected (the current Canadian Senate is appointed), and Effective (having real power against the oddly named but all-powerful "House of Commons"). They have realized, somewhere along the line, that the United States Senate is exactly the kind of Senate they want, and that they can gain a Triple-E Senate simply by joining the United States.

Not all Western Canadians disgusted with domination by Ontario and Quebec have felt free to advocate abandoning Canada for the United States. Some have opted, at least for now, for independence, as two or four little countries of their own, separate from both Canada and the United States. Some have even proposed that Washington State and Oregon join them in a new country, "Cascadia", to be ripped from both larger countries.

Most of these separatists know in their heart that such separatist programs are at best temporary measures, a way of equivocating and not seeming to "go over to the enemy" — the United States as it has historically been cast by the Tories driven out of their original home. But there is no reason for equivocation; no justification for a delay in bringing Western Canadian provinces into the U.S. as new states of the Union. Declaring independence is no less "treasonous" to Canada than would be petitioning Congress for statehood. And there is even less justification for separation of Western Canada, which speaks English, than for Quebec, whose independence ("sovereigntist") movement is decried by Canadian nationalists as treason.

A two-step move from Canada into the United States via short-term independence would introduce needless confusion and complication into what should be a simple and straightforward process of redrawing a map marred by British imperialism 134 years ago, when the British Empire drew a line in the dirt to keep part of North America "British" and out of the hands of those "damned Yankees". But Canada is not today British, is it? So why is that British-drawn line in the dirt still controlling our lives? For millions of Canadians and tens of millions of Americans, there is no persuasive answer to that question.

USI cautions the advocates of independence for Quebec and Western Canada that everything they find limiting in Canada will be even more limiting in an even smaller country of their own.

They risk being dwarfs in a world of giants, unable to defend their interests against rapacious competitors.

Flag-waving doesn't fill empty stomachs, and there is no guarantee that the United States will subsidize the independence of ministates created out of Canada by giving free access to the U.S. market without statehood. American power brokers may decide that the long-term stability of our neighborhood requires that all ministates be annexed to the United States, and apply pressure to bring that about.

We of USI don't want to see friction between the U.S. and its near neighbors. We want them to join the Union, share U.S. citizenship and control over the U.S. Government, and make the United States much bigger, and much better.

USI is proud to have as a Charter Member a Canadian website that advocates erasing the pointless line in the dirt that we have inherited, and joining all of Canada with the United States: United North America: Amalgamation of Canada and the United States of America. Another of our Charter Members advocates full integration of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, all three present members of NAFTA: Pax Americana. A third, the Expansionist Party of the United States, has a number of presentations on Canada (and Quebec), all of which are accessible thru any of them. And USI's first member in the "Individual Activist" category, James Bredin of Canada, has a page on this subject at http://jamesbredin.tripod.com/numberfour/.

Take a poll! USI Charter Member the Expansionist Party of the United States has two polls, one for Canadians, one for Americans, on the topic of Canadian accession to the Union.

Check out a printable flyer with tear-off tabs for posting on bulletin boards. If you'd like to post this flyer in your area, please (a) fold back and forth several times on the line between the tab area and main text so that if someone rips off a tab a chunk of the message won't come off with it, (b) cut each tab free from the others, and (c) put it up only in legally permissible display areas, such as bulletin boards you are authorized to post to, public kiosks, etc.

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