Canada has always been caught between its parent and an unruly sibling
Further thoughts on discussions of USA's possible "annexation" of Canada
I want to offer some of my own thoughts on an interesting thought piece.
I agree with the sentiment that the elites of Canada don’t care about Canadian sovereignty. I disagree that this is only economic elites. There are loyalists to British and US worldviews that have been dragging Canadian institutions between these foreign entities since the British Government created these institutions in1867. I have never observed any true desire for an institutional and policy movement away from both of these foreign entities.
You can see that with the Liberal Party of Canada’s current US-style leadership primary. This is something Canada does that other Commonwealth countries using a similar Westminster Parliamentary System do not, as they don’t aspire to have a US-style presidency rather than a properly accountablePrime Minister.
The Dominion of Canada (as it was still more honestly called when I was born) was never an example of the inhabitants of this land coming together to form a nation. The Dominion was created and maintained through acts of the British Parliament, which gradually allowed this corporate subsidiary additional independence. To this day, new Canadians and members of the Canadian Parliament need to swear true allegiance to the head of the British Monarchy (The Canadian Crown).
Most of the existing inhabitants of the land which the Canadian government claims of Canada weren’t even informed in 1867 of these foreign government acts. Using racist and genocidal policies as a form of gerrymandering, Canada’s settler population now greatly outnumbers Indigenous peoples.
The USA is a set of separatist colonies who were even less interested in obeying their own colonial laws than the northern colonies. The lack of respect for treaties and the rule of law has been a defining feature of these separatists since the 1775 civil war. The separatist colonies have wanted the loyalist colonies to join them ever since, with the current Trump regime merely being more open and honest about this..
What is now called “Canada” has always existed as a set of institutions stuck between its creator Britain and the separatist USA, and has always been fully dependent on these foreign entities.
I included some of the relevant dates of Canada’s history in: