Re: (ReacTor) Five Futures Where the US Ended Not With a Bang But a Whimper

On Wed, 28 May 2025 16:50:56 -0000 (UTC), jdnicoll@panix.com (James
Nicoll) wrote:
>

That's not even getting into how Quebec would react as French gets
bumped down from second language to third, after Spanish.

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Which practically speaking is why the proposition is so absurd.
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BC and AB combined have a considerably larger population than Quebec
yet considerably fewer seats in Parliament AND the constitutional
amending formula prevents any constitutional amendments that Quebec or
the Maritime provinces object to no matter how lopsided the population
gets. Can't remember whether it was the premier of NS or NB who said
something to the effect of "the present amending formula works quite
well for us - why would we consent to change it?'
>
Thus BC and AB are under represented in BOTH houses of Parliament and
the amending formula prevents any changes - forever. Is it any wonder
why people in BC and AB feel like second class citizens in their own
country?
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Now all Canadian provinces (except PEI) have a larger population than
the smallest US state but only ON, QC, BC, AB have more than 4 million
people which by US state standards is small.
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Bottom line is if Donald Trump made his "51st state joke" once and
never repeated it Canadians would have forgotten it by now - but he
didn't and in so doing drove US-Canada relations to the lowest point
in 50+ years.
>
The hell of it is that in 2024, Trump really WAS a better candidate
than Harris (much less Biden given his mental state in 2024) which
says more about Harris than Trump.
>
It's not the first time a political leader has been less than
completely 'compos mentis' - and Winston Churchill (even though in his
prime was a much better Prime Minister than Biden ever was as
President) at the end of his last term of office was in much worse
shape than Biden.