Why Canada Should Join the EU • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#651

Post by bboygravity » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 8:46 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #385

Does the economist know what time it is? Nationalism is resurgent: nationalist parties now control the U.S. and Italy. Canada seems poised to Poilievre, who has made impassioned appeals to Canadian nationalism. And in Germany, France, and the U.K., nationalist parties have effectively rendered the governing coalitions impotent, even if they cannot yet command a majority. What a time to suggest that Canadians cede the…

Or another point of view: yet another financially incompetent government with insane over-spending.

Just what the EU needs! We don't have enough loss of buying power yet, let's accelerate that some more until we're the third world asap.

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#652

Post by mike_hearn » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 8:49 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #576

kypro wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The left-wing party in the UK has only just won its largest majority in history and we don't have another election for 5 years. That is largely because the right has split into populist right and centre-right parties though.

Labour won the election, but Starmer’s approval rating is already down to 27% after just six months. https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/dissatisfaction-starmer-reaches-... . That’s not surprising given that Labour got half a million fewer votes than it did in 2019, when it lost in a landslide, but won anyway because of infighting among the right wing. That’s what I meant when I said nationalists have rendered ruling parties…

Also Austria. The phenomenon of bizarre unworkable coalitions forming to try and keep out right wing parties is found everywhere in Europe. The left and old right (now usually themselves centre left) would rather have no government at all than one that includes anti-migrationists.

But the UK doesn't really follow that trend. Labour isn't a coalition, it's a unified party with a large majority that can do what it wants. It's deeply unpopular but that doesn't translate to weakness.

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#653

Post by jmb99 » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 8:51 AM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #615

jmb99 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quote from a Chinese friend of mine form over the holidays (currently in Canada on a work visa, applying for a PR shortly, started as an exchange student in highschool): “I really like coming back to [jmb99’s hometown], it’s all white people. Nice change from Toronto.” Definitely a common sentiment.

"Chinese person: Racist against Indians" is hardly a newsworthy headline. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. I live in Vancouver and I'm apalled to hear some of the things my Chinese friends sometimes say about Sikhs in Surrey.

Maybe I should have expanded a bit more. He lives in downtown Toronto in the financial district, and went to university in Waterloo, both heavily Asian (Chinese, and to a lesser extent Japanese and Korean) immigrant populations. The Indian immigrants people complain about these days are (stereotypically) centred in the Mississauga and Brampton suburbs, with far fewer in other parts of the GTA. He is explicitly complaining about the large number of Chinese immigrants that he went to school with and are in his area in Toronto.

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#654

Post by mike_hearn » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 8:58 AM UTC

switchbak wrote: post #368

jt2190 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I really don't understand the downvotes on this one. This is quite literally the rationale behind the policy that the Liberals implemented in the last decade. In fact, Canada has been a strong proponent of using immigration to pad its lacklustre birth rate for a very long time, and is (or was) often viewed as a success model of how to achieve that while retaining social harmony. I think that should probably be contra…

> This is quite literally the rationale behind the policy

Is it? When and where did Trudeau say this, because European leaders never have as far as I know.

I'm pretty sure that actually left wing politicians always explicitly deny that this is the rationale in the loudest possible terms, because the idea that the left want to import high fertility foreigners who will then outbreed and thus replace the natives is sometimes called "Great Replacement", and the media/political establishment all consider it an unspeakably terrible conspiracy theory only believed by Nazis.

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#655

Post by epolanski » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 9:18 AM UTC

3vidence wrote: post #537

epolanski wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gonna tell you a secret, the world isn't black and white, while there are areas such as the economy where we struggle to compete as an European I would never want to live in the US again (I studied in Columbus Ohio for 7 months as an exchange student at OSU and traveled US multiple times). The streets here are clean, spotting a homeless person is borderline impossible even if you try, in US I've seen tents, bidonvill…

Did you say you can't spot a homeless person in Canada??? This literally can't be true every single large city in Canada is struggling with increasing homelessness right now. Do you live in a cabin up in Muskoka??

I admit I've been there only once for a month in 2017 but I meant that the situation was better than what I saw in the US at the same time.

I have stayed in Hamilton, Lake Ontario and traveled Toronto, Quebec area, etc.

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#656

Post by genman » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 9:22 AM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #628

KPGv2 wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The English colonized, ruled, and conducted a deliberate genocide against the Irish people. It's pretty analogous. The English starved them to death. The English forcibly displaced them. The English stole their resources. The English even forbade them from speaking their language.

And about 100 years ago, the Irish rebelled and won their independence from England. And those that didn't are no longer being treated this way, and haven't been for more than 50 years. So what exactly should the English learn from Canadians today? Even the Irish in Northern Ireland have more freedom and autonomy than the First Nations have in Canada, not less.

Not to mention that UK doesn't even belong to EU for a quite considerable time for a random person to take a bloody notice.

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#657

Post by mike_hearn » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 9:30 AM UTC

mmooss wrote: post #160

cs02rm0 wrote: post #20

Wacky idea. The EU is an awful lot of legislation to sign up to, not the most popular it's even been either. If it's just about trading space and resources for people I'd imagine a more bespoke arrangement would be preferable for both sides.

Despite the critics, many countries have signed up and would like to, and only one has left. Why is EU membership so much in demand?

[flagged]

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#658

Post by BlueTemplar » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 9:36 AM UTC

SllX wrote: post #102

haunter wrote: post #19

Not outlandish, Morocco applied in 1987 but it was rejected https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco%E2%80%93European_Union...

It’s pretty outlandish. One of the core tenants of EU expansionism and the politics around it is that the applying nations are considered European enough and physically located in Europe in addition to being willing to cooperate with the EU in meeting the general requirements of a member nation. But just because you’re at least partly in Europe isn’t enough in some cases depending on who you are, and this was used in…

I'm going to talk about much longer timeframes, but as a reminder, the Mediterranean used to be the center of Western Civilization (because trade was ridiculously more effective over it than over land), with what is now Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Tunisia... being major """European""" centers. At the same time, what is now the British Islands were some kind of "end of the world" location (the equivalent of today's Alaska/Greenland/Northern Canada (?))

The importance of the Arctic becoming viable for trade routes should not be underestimated.

(Even more so, on a longer timeframe, if equatorial locations become uninhabitable because too hot.)

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#659

Post by Wytwwww » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 9:39 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #580

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…

The irish. The scots. Basically everyone who wasnt related to the vikings after 1066. The welsh trying to protect thier language are basically quebec. The scots talking about leaving, but never actually doing it, are basically alberta. And thats just similarities in the british isles. Then there are all the little counties bordering giant countries (finland) that see parallels to the canada-us relationship.

At least the Scots and Welsh still exist (e.g. unlike the Occitan people or the Bretons) and were actually allowed to have a referendum (unlike the Catalans).

Re: Why Canada Should Join the EU

#660

Post by victorbjorklund » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 9:44 AM UTC

lazyasciiart wrote: post #128

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…

> And the few tribal populations in Northern Europe generally were and certainly are today treated at least as fairly as anything in Canada. Really? The Sami populations don't have any sovereignty that I know of.

They got some sovereignty in Sweden with their own parliament etc (but its jurisdiction etc is limited). Can't really say if better or worse than Canada because I don't know enough about the laws in Canada.