A Canadian Journalist Dreams Of The Day When Her Country Finally Merges With The United States
October 7, 2013 Leave a comment
A Canadian Journalist Dreams Of The Day When Her Country Finally Merges With The United States
SARANYA KAPUR OCT. 5, 2013, 9:33 AM 4,120 56
In the dystopian future imagined by Canadian journalist Diane Francis, Russia owns all of Canada’s oil and the Chinese own all its ports. Canada is rendered a colony of the two non-Western superpowers, while the U.S. is left out in the cold, surrounded by its enemies and unable to access that sweet, sweet oil. Calling current trade relations between these superpowers a “new cold war,” Francis believes that the U.S. and Canada need to do what any two businesses would do in the face of an external threat: consolidate. In her controversial new book, “Merger of the Century: Why Canada and America Should Become One Country,” Francis lays out her thesis for uniting the two North American countries into one. She writes,“Without dramatic change, Canada will remain … somewhat sleepy and vulnerable. The United States will continue to go broke buying foreign oil and cheap goods from Asia, then guarding countries that could and should pay for their own protection and, while they are at it, ‘buy American.'”
In an interview with Foreign Policy, Francis calls Canada, the “back-door entry” for the emerging superpowers to enter the U.S. markets, which they are currently somewhat excluded from. She says,
“Canada is … peripheral to the United States, as Turkey is [to the EU], and you’ll notice that the Chinese start to do business not in the EU, but in the periphery — Bulgaria, Turkey. They just landed a big contract for their avionics, their air-traffic controls. They’re building bridges; they’re building roads.”
China has been investing heavily in Canadian energy. Last year, the Chinese state-run company China National Offshore Oil Corporation purchased Nexen, a Canadian oil and gas company, for $15 billion.
However, she believes that while the U.S. and Canada are already merging through investment and immigration, she wants them to go “all the way.” She believes consolidation will happen through trade relations and a loosening of regulations, and will be less formal than an outright merger of the two countries.
She tells Foreign Policy, “We’re dating heavily – let’s think about common law, maybe marriage.”
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