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EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

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Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#601
post #75

No idea what this actually means, if it means easier trade, I'm all for anything that reduces our dependency on the yanks, as long as we don't need to be involved in their regulatory or legal regimes. The Americans are no longer our friends, Salut, mes amis Européens. :)

> The Americans are no longer our friends, Salut, mes amis Européens. :)

Salut ! I wouldn't say the Americans are no longer our friends, but trust is definitely gone.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, the Brexit referendum was a campaign promise of David Cameron that was going to trigger if his conservative party won the 2015 general election That is iff the renegotiations with Brussels failed, which they did. > The UK renegotiation was a net loss for the EU, this Canada deal is a deal where both parties gain something. V. hard to see what Canada gets out of it. All the roadblocks to Canadian trade with th…

> All the roadblocks to Canadian trade with the EU today (especially around resources) are internal to Canada and have nothing at all to do with EU status. Presumably under the proposed thing Canada would largely adopt EU regulations. This would make trade (particularly for small businesses) _far_ easier. See the UK for how difficult this can become if you're not in alignment; it's survivable for huge companies (thou…

> Presumably under the proposed thing Canada would largely adopt EU regulations.

Canadian provinces do not agree with each other about trade regulations. They will not surrender this to the federal government, and they certainly won't to the EU.

Canada isn't actually a single market itself.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#603
post #75

No idea what this actually means, if it means easier trade, I'm all for anything that reduces our dependency on the yanks, as long as we don't need to be involved in their regulatory or legal regimes. The Americans are no longer our friends, Salut, mes amis Européens. :)

There are multiple levels of European integration [1]. Fun fact: Canada already borders the EU. There's an island called Saint Pierre and Miquelon, which is only ~12 miles from Newfoundland. These islands became a massive smuggling hub for alcohol during Prohibition.

Here are some guiding principles of EU integration:

1. To have a say in EU rules generally requires being a full member. To some extent you can negotiate your entry into whatever level you desire but this has to be mutual agreement and can be difficult to change later without essentially threatening to leave;

2. Conditions generally need to be reciprocal. If you want freedom of movement in the EU then you have freedom of movement from other European states. This was a real sticking point in the Brexit negotiations and the EU doesn't play with reciprocal freedoms; and

3. Any sort of free trade with the EU will mean adopting EU regulations to be within the EU customs union. I don't see this flying with Canada because despite current trade hostilities with the US, the US is and will remain the primary trading partner of Canada. Adopting EU regulations might make US trade more difficult;

Also, the US might have legitimate cause to object. If Canada and US have free trade and Canada and the EU has free trade then that's opting the US into EU regulation essentially.

In some ways this is similar to the strained situation invented for Northern Ireland.

Obviously, Canada won't be joining Schengen or the Euro. Canada already has visa-free travel to the EU.

Canada still has a housing crisis and increased migration from the EU is likely a political non-starter even though those things aren't really related and literally nobody is going to tackle the true cause of the housing crisis (just like in every developed country). As an aside, the true cause is hoarding combined with tax advantages and a political goal of raising house prices.

In short, I don't know that this means anything because I don't think anything can substantively change with the Canada-EU relationship.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1qbq43v/european_in...

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Carney was asking for freedom of movement of goods, people and services, but without full monetary and legislative integration. > no payments into each others budget. Not going to happen! To enable free movement of goods and services the EU insists that the goods and services are produced in an identical regulatory environment. Even when the regimes are basically identical - eg the UK - then the EU doesn't permit i…

It's actually going to raise questions as to why the EU are A-OK with this now when a possible interpretation of associate membership is it's what Cameron was trying to negotiate the UK into when complete inflexibility on the EU side triggered the Brexit referendum. All depends on what an associate member is of course.

Cameron did get what he wanted before the referendum: "After the deal had been approved, Cameron described it as giving the United Kingdom "special status within the European Union" and immediately declared that both he and the UK Government would campaign for a "Remain" vote in the referendum within a "reformed European Union"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%932016_United_Kingd...

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The votes consistently tell a different story.

Trump won the popular vote once, not consistently, against an understudy candidate who was pushed on stage at the last minute. Also, opinions have shifted since that time as people have noticed how unhinged Trump is.

[deleted]

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#608
post #474
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carney was asking for freedom of movement of goods, people and services, but without full monetary and legislative integration. So, easier to sell stuff, easier to buy stuff, free to just travel to/from Canada/EU and work there with no extra paperwork, free to buy and sell service from Canada to EU and vice versa. No Euro, no vote in EU, no ECJ, no payments into each others budget. Tighter integration than UK, not as…

When several EU countries are already struggling with large Indian Subcontinent communities that don't integrate (and dodge taxes and food-processing regs--Indians where I am have their own large underground cash-only food economy among themselves), opening up flow of people from Canada's mobile classes which has seen vast demographic change seems like it would only exacerbate the problem.

Which countries are these? There's a large population of Indian immigrants in Ireland, who seem to be integrating fine and are not notably doing much tax dodging (they would largely work in high-skill PAYE jobs, where tax dodging is virtually impossible).

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#609
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid you're mistaking our lunatic leader with "us". Understandable, but this step will be wholly unnecessary as soon as December when his power will be checked (largely). I lean right, more libertarian small government type, so you're not hearing this from a blowhard on the American left. His foreign policy, the way he's treated friends has been wanton and immensely damaging, and a whole lot of us want this cor…

You're right, I am confused. It was clear what was going on under his first term... You guys voted him back in!!

The system elected him without a majority.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#610

> Canada's Bill C-22 Would Force Encryption Backdoors > Signal, Windscribe, and NordVPN say they'll pull out of Canada before building surveillance infrastructure. The biggest threat to encrypted communications in a Western democracy since Australia's 2018 law. https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/canada-bill-c22-lawful-... + > European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy, Framing M…

It seems every country in the world has such regimes, either publicly or in the background. You can bet no Chinese or Russian system comes without backdoors, plenty of US systems have been revealed to have backdoors, etc.

I disagree with this, but it's still somehow not an aspect uniquely horrible about EU or Canadian policy making, so not sure why this would be relevant here.

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