Why Canada Won’t Join The US

Joining the U.S. would be a net loss for Canada—
even if it made us Canadians richer, said Conrad
Black. It’s not that the idea of a merger, currently
touted by journalist Diane Francis in her book
Merger of the Century, makes me “tremble with
patriotic loathing”—after all, I once suggested that
joining the U.S. would be preferable for English
Canada than suffering under Quebec’s perennial
demands for both sovereignty and transfer payments.
But Francis’s plan won’t fly. Over the past
decade, the U.S. has “debased its currency and
destabilized the world financial system” thanks to
“venal and incompetent” Wall Street tycoons. Its
foreign policy has lost its way in two costly wars
that have made the world less safe, not more.
American education and health care are both
outrageously expensive and deliver relatively poor
outcomes, while its once-admired justice system
has become “a conveyor belt into the bloated and
corrupt prison system.” Absorbing Canada would
be great for the U.S.—it would gain an immense
source of natural resources and an infusion of
some 34 million educated, law-abiding citizens. But
“Canada is, by every measure, a better-governed
country than the U.S. So why would Canadians
want to take such a great leap backward?”

Original publication: Conrad Black, National Post