Why Canada Should Join the EU • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#591

Post by acyou » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 5:21 AM UTC

Canada works well as a buffer state between USA and Russia. Canada acts as the USA attack dog in foreign policy. Don't forget which countries won the war and still rule globally with nuclear powered aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, submarines, ICBMs and who prints the world reserve currency (hint: it isn't Europe or any of the countries therein).

Canada is effectively already the 51st state and has been so for 200+ years. It cannot be understated how greatly Canadians have benefited from this association and arrangement.

As far as immigration goes, it seems to be beneficial for the existing residents of a country to have controlled immigration at a certain rate. If the rate is too high, people complain, and if rates are too low, economies suffer.

Building houses works the same way, build them too fast and everyone suffers, build them too slow and everyone suffers. We aim for the slow, steady and sustainable increase.

As for this idea... barring a massive increase in spending by NATO members not including USA, Canada doesn't have the ability to become part of Europe. OTOH, they sure could/would get annexed by USA if that's the way the conversation is starting to go.

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#592

Post by mensetmanusman » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 5:22 AM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #456

adriand wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not the full context of what is in the article. The full sentence is: > Europeans could learn from Canada how to allow immigration in a fashion that the population embraces rather than tolerates, though a housing crunch has frayed that consensus of late. Far from sounding ignorant, the author sounds well-informed.

Umm no? There is (sadly) a significant anti-immigration backlash right now in canada. Its a core election issue and one of the main reasons trudeau is likely going to lose the next election.

It is sad because the government knew and failed to act on 5x-ing the rate of housing production to keep up with new arrivals.

Failing to do so has screwed over so many people due to housing costs that went up due to mass migration. This was all predicted though if that makes anyone feel better.

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#593

Post by mensetmanusman » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 5:23 AM UTC

jt2190 wrote: post #333

wvenable wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Canada, one cannot lump all immigrants together even those from the same part of the world. Canada used to be pretty strict on immigration only allowing highly skilled individuals from all over the world. But in the last decade this has changed to just importing as many bodies as possible. I won't go into the reasons for this change but it has dramatically altered the character of the country in this time. We have…

Canada is in a demographic crisis: The birthrate is too low, the population is aging and the country can’t afford to provide people with all of the social benefits AND have no laborers paying in to the benefit system. Importing lots of young labor rebalances the demographics and bolsters funding of benefits, at the expense of a housing crisis and social tensions. The alternative is to deeply cut benefits, which is po…

Mass Low skill immigration decreases productivity per capita and reduces wealth.

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#594

Post by mensetmanusman » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 5:25 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #476

bufferoverflow wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you mix a culture that throws gays people off roofs with a culture that celebrates gay people? To me it's pretty obvious not all cultures are good to mix with.

Obviously by creating a culture that celebrates gay people before throwing them off roofs. Which isn’t terribly far fetched - apparently some gladiators were basically sports stars, with death.

Install Foxconn nets?

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#595

Post by crote » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 5:25 AM UTC

slothtrop wrote: post #413

threeseed wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada needs people and fast. Otherwise good luck affording a social net in future decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...

What will boomers, the richest generation, ever do? This is overstated. The alarm was sounded on this 2 decades ago for several east Asian countries, but they're not on fire. They're fine. Old people die. If the fertility rate mattered that much, they'd have scrambled to make any number of policy changes including better work-life balance (see: Japan, SK, China), or plain ol' immigration, but they don't because it si…

> What will boomers, the richest generation, ever do?

A wad of cash isn't going to help you of bed. Yeah they are going to die, but if you're not careful it's going to be a lot quicker and a lot more painful than you had hoped.

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#596

Post by dangus » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 5:30 AM UTC

BJones12 wrote: post #8

> Europeans could learn from Canada how to allow immigration in a fashion that the population embraces rather than tolerates Clearly the author is ignorant. Canadians are sick of immigration. Young Canadians doubly so. Racism is becoming more acceptable by the day.

I think in this context the idea of open borders between the USA and Canada in a similar fashion to the EU would be an interesting thought experiment to study.

Presumably a bunch of Canadians would leave Canada in favor of higher US salaries, or cheaper housing. The idea that Toronto real estate pricing is so geographically close to Buffalo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh is interesting.

Then again, presumably a bunch of people looking for affordable healthcare would be moving up to Canada.

Or perhaps not all that many people would go anywhere permanently and they would just have an easier time going on vacation in either direction.

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#597

Post by crote » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 5:30 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #522

atmosx wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. How do you define "success"? Is the average American Joe really better off than the average European Joe? In the U.S., a cancer diagnosis can lead to bankruptcy, while treatment is free (or close to free) in most EU countries. Education is largely free as well, and you don't see people walking around armed like they’re in the Marine Corps. So, I'm not sure what benchmark we're using to measure this.

Which way are the immigrants flowing? If European Joe is better off than American Joe it should be a net flow to Europe, no? And I’ve seen way more people walking around with military weapons in Europe than I ever have in the USA - to be fair, they were the literal armed forces of the country, but still exceptionally weird to see as an American.

Europe doesn't allow American Joe to migrate to it.

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#598

Post by fweimer » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 5:35 AM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #6

> Canada’s inclusive treatment of its indigenous peoples, at least in recent decades, could be emulated by Europeans (though First Nations Canadians might fairly object to closer ties with ex-colonists) I really wonder what the author meant with this line. There's very few populations in Europe that bear any similarity whatsoever with the relationship between First Nations people and most Canadians, since most popula…

Most peoples in Europe do not have their own nation state. In fact, pretending that those peoples with their distinct languages (often called “dialects” despite lack of mutual intelligibility) and cultures do not exist is a key part of the establishment of nation states in the 19th century. In most of Europe, the nation state project was so successful that this hardly matters today (but of course there are exceptions).

Still comparison to First Nations seems off. Maybe it's about this: Disadvantaged ethnic groups such as Romani or Jews (particularly post-Soviet Jews in recent times) are often denied a connection to the nation state or (what you might call) the shared European cultural heritage. In contrast, I don't think anyone argues that First Nations aren't true Canadians.

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#599

Post by ulfw » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 5:36 AM UTC

BJones12 wrote: post #8

> Europeans could learn from Canada how to allow immigration in a fashion that the population embraces rather than tolerates Clearly the author is ignorant. Canadians are sick of immigration. Young Canadians doubly so. Racism is becoming more acceptable by the day.

Sounds like a country that shouldn't be part of a multicultural European Union then

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#600

Post by petre » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 5:41 AM UTC

dr_dshiv wrote: post #251

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because those immigrants came here because they wanted to be Canadians. These new immigrants have no desire to integrate.

Idk the Amish are pretty chill for not integrating. And if immigrants come and integrate into existing gang culture, would you actually be happy? I think it is ok to just say “we don’t want poor immigrants. We want immigrants with something to offer.”

The Amish don't cause any problems. More specifically, they don't drive vehicles into crowds at Christmas fairs. They integrate very well with the rest in fact, engaging in commerce while preserving their culture.

Canada got their share of Chinese immigrants with $$$. That's how real estate in Vancouver ended up being inacessible for younger Canadians.