EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone

It doesn't. You keep referring to a legal document, as if it's the legal document that matters. The legal document enshrines rights, but it was written in the context of both Ireland and UK being EU members - there was no reason to explicitly add things that came with the EU, or with the Common Travel Area, into the document, since they were part of the situation already.

But in any case, to the specifics of the document.

Declaration Of Support, clause 3:

> We are committed to partnership, equality and mutual respect as the basis of relationships within Northern Ireland, between North and South, and between these islands.

How can there be equality if Irish nationalists in Northern Ireland face a border when they go south, but Unionist British nationalists don't face a border when they go east?

In the Agreement between Government of UK and Government of Ireland, Article 1, the two governments:

> acknowledge that while a substantial section of the people in Northern Ireland share the legitimate wish of a majority of the people of the island of Ireland for a united Ireland, the present wish of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland, freely exercised and legitimate, is to maintain the Union and accordingly, that Northern Ireland’s status as part of the United Kingdom reflects and relies upon that wish; and that it would be wrong to make any change in the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent of a majority of its people

Do you think putting a hard border between NI and the Republic constitutes a change in the status of Northern Ireland without a consent of the majority of its people, against the legitimate wishes of people in Northern Ireland and a majority on the island?

Don't forget that the only people representing Northern Ireland in this debacle of UK government dysfunction is the one NI party that voted against the GFA.

"There are still so many things that are ridiculously expensive in Canada for no rational (long term) benefit to either party assuming it was a real market"

This is because Canada has what some might describe as an inefficient economy, ruled by a small cabal of oligarchic players.

We have maybe 6-7 banks nationally, each with a different coloured logo, but with the exact same services!

There are other reasons of course.

Also, Canadian national policy has always been about 'peace and stability' over market ambitions, so 'somewhat higher pr ices might literally be the price we pay for that.

If anything it's only positive for:

a) the private friends of government who profited when the business was kept 100% Canadian

b) the intelligence agencies who were given plenty of access.

Most of the ownership capital went to a small group of millionaires and billionaires. Meanwhile the jobs/network/other taxable services would still exist in Canada regardless of the nationality of the original investors.

Plus the wireless networks continue to be very closely controlled in these companies favour. They only recently allowed a single competitor into the marketplace in Canada, Freedom Mobile, and they have the best pricing with tons of data. The main monopolies still have nothing comparable price-wise - their only edge remains their network investment which will diminish over time absent more gov intervention.

But even getting Freedom Mobile, which had plenty of foreign investors, to be a thing was a huge controversial, challenging, multi-year deal, which was extremely risky for its investors because the Canadian regulatory agencies were very close to nipping the deal under extreme political pressure from the entrenched companies.

How exactly do we as citizens benefit from this?

A Canada-style FTA has always been one of the options available to the UK. It is immortalized in Barnier’s famous diagram from the very beginning of the negotiations: https://goo.gl/images/AqyD7w