Oh No, Canada!
Steven den Beste threw out a pretty interesting topic Tuesday night: the potential breakup of Canada, and the followup possibility of Canadian provinces (particularly in the West) joining the USA. While I must preface this with my thought that I doubt this will really happen, it’s a fun topic about which to speculate wildly, with much less likely (and certainly less immediate) impact than, say, ACC expansion. ;-)
Mark Byron responded pretty cogently this morning, likening the situation more to that of Texas than that of the rest of the West; a population and a government are already in place, they’d just be asking for a home.
I’d expect that, were the secession/statehood question to become real, there would have to be at least two ballot questions, if not two separate votes; something along the lines of “(1) Should the province of Alberta withdraw from the Dominion of Canada?” and “(2) If the province of Alberta withdraws from Canada, should it (a) become an independent country or (b) petition immediately for admittance to the United States of America?” I think Den Beste’s prediction of a western confederation would probably only occur after an interim period of independence — although perhaps not a long one. The Canadian tradition (inherited from the English) of government by custom rather than by strict-constructionist law would actually serve this process quite well, as formal legal documents wouldn’t have to be laid out quite as quickly in this situation as they would for the American option.
That brings us to a sub-issue of the admission vote, that of a state constitution. Canadian provinces don’t appear to have formal written provincial constitutions, just like the country doesn’t have a fully fleshed-out national constitution, as we view the term (defining governmental structure and enumerating limitations on governmental power). Each province would need one to become a US state. (For more info on Canadian government, check out How Canadians Govern Themselves (5th edition) (801K PDF), a high-school level reader on Canadian civics.) In U.S. history, state constitutions were generally written by a constitutional convention after the application question was decided positively. I wonder whether, these days, a constitution would have to be part of the vote for statehood.
For the leaders of such a movement, I doubt a formal move would be made until they had a pretty certain answer to three questions:
- Will secession succeed?
- Does the populace support joining the USA?
- Will the USA take us?
On our side, my biggest question would be whether whether Democrats would predicate an admission vote (especially of Alberta, Saskatchewan and/or Manitoba, potential Republican leans in presidential elections) on statehood for the District of Columbia. (Whether DC actually deserves statehood is another question entirely, one we might explore sometime later.) I’m actually not terribly worried about the question of transferring liabilities of the Canadian welfare state to the U.S. federal government, especially socialized medicine. Those liabilities would likely be the states’ domain under the U.S. federal system, and would merely need to be provided for in the new state constitutions.
Again, this stuff makes my ACC expansion discussions look thoroughly grounded in fact by comparison. It’s just fun to speculate, for many of the same reasons that I enjoy reading Harry Turtledove’s alternate history series. I don’t really expect any of this to happen, simply because the Canadian West’s discontent probably isn’t great enough to overcome the weight of inertia.
Unless Québec pulls a Miami one of these days.
11 June 2003 / 13 Comments / Tags: politics, canada