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After checking the transcript with a ctrl+f "arctic" . . .
. . . #14: oh and not for nothing but if the Transpolar Sea Route opens Canada will gain the second most geostrategically significant coastline on the planet.
You can't have a discussion about the US acquiring Greenland or Canadian territory without including the arctic opening to shipping. If it should come to pass that freighters can easily cross the arctic, it will be the most impactful event for trade since the Panama Canal.
I assess Trump higher than most so I wouldn't be surprised if this is a tertiary motivator for his wanting Greenland after resource wealth and Monroe Doctrine. I don't know how to place his posturing on Canada, but that's because I don't believe Canada in its current form will exist by 2100. As discontent with their governance rises, so does the probability of a serious secessionist movement. If Alberta votes to secede, they will be backed by the full weight of the American establishment, up to declaring war if necessary. It's too much land, money, and power. If one leads to another, if Saskatchewan and Manitoba want to join, if Quebec also secedes, then suddenly we might have two or three highly developed nations to our north. Smaller states, more dependent on the US, more money. Imagine Vancouver becoming a city-state, we'd pour money in, we'd guarantee their sovereignty. We get the right leader in and in a few decades maybe we have the American Singapore. Meanwhile, with Alberta and/or Saskatchewan and/or Manitoba in the union, we'll have borders carved on one side to the shores of the Northwest Territories and on the other to the shores of Hudson Bay.
Regardless of what is actually going on in Trump's mind with Greenland and Canada, serious actors have understood the significance of the TSR for a long time. Greenland, regardless of the ice melting, will be part of the US soon enough. Canada depends on too much to say with certainty, other than the certainty of the US supporting any border province that votes to secede.
I mean, it's funny you call Quebec highly-developed, but anyway.
A secessionist movement there is going to have to be smart enough to consider Montreal a lost cause, or at least neutral ground (it is not a French city by voting pattern). Their failure to do this last time is the reason why Quebec is not today its own nation- too attached to the Provincial borders.
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My read of the 'realities' is that Albertan/Saskatchewanian oil money being redistributed east is the main factor neutering Quebecois independence; one can expect that if the prairies vote to leave Quebec will too, sometime soon. That leaves BC, Ontario, and some tiny poor flyover, which is a recipe for further fragmentation.
Like if Texas secedes it doesn't necessarily trigger California secession.
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It's worth noting that the polls (that show Upper and Lower Canada once again uniting to fuck up the rest of the country) show the West voting even harder for their regional interest party. Once the Alberta metro areas start seriously considering this, and extended trade war applied in sufficient quantities (on the Canadian side- tariffs are federal, and the LPC and its voters will gladly burn the nation down this way for ego reasons) will accomplish this, it's over.
The best ending for us at this point is that the West leaves Canada for good, and becomes part of a full free-trade economic union with the United States but still a nation in its own right. I don't think the Alberta public will accept outright joining the Union as a new State, at least at first; actually, I don't think BC, SK, or MB will either. This is for the same reason that some US territories outright reject Statehood. Ottawa and Toronto will be able to apply more pressure on the parts of Ontario that are not them so it'll take them longer and Atlantic Canada is utterly dependent on government handouts for survival so they'll never leave willingly. There are far more entrenched economic interests in the East compared to the West, and the ones that do exist out West are more heavily enmeshed with American interests.
And then there's the matter of who they'd be voting for in US elections with full Statehood, and the fact that being under American dominion means American institutions, and American institutions means American grievances, and American grievances are wrong and bad (witness how much damage they have done to the whole of Canada already!) so if we can limit the damage they do that's good.
The ultimate problem for AB right now is that it's landlocked, so it needs to be able to cut a path to the sea to sell its wares (the closest warm-water port is Kitimat and it would become a nation away should it leave the Dominion). Having no border between it and the states to its immediate South will help with this, but it'll still be at a disadvantage.
Vancouver will only become a city state should the rest of the province seek a divorce. This isn't a hypothetical when you look at the election map: the current government has literally zero seats outside the GVRD and Island yet the interest party for those areas forms a majority government. Clear evidence of irreconcilable differences, much like the West is to (Upper and Lower) Canada as a whole.
Again, there are certain trade levers that can be pulled to make that happen; the US dropping its softwood import tariff conditional upon desired political realignment and ensuring northern reserves of natural gas are legal to extract would be one of them.
Fossil fuel extraction pushes local politics towards the GOP in the US. There are few irreconcilable political differences between the parties but fossil fuels is the biggest.
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