abff08f4813c

Oh, I agree! I just wanted to say if that was the sole stumbling block to moving closer to the EU, then your idea would prevent that from blocking everything else.

Absolutely, agreed. The issue here is that Canada may not qualify, as we’re North American rather than European. (While it’s true that we’re right next to Greenland and the French territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, neither territory is part of the EU but rather both are considers “overseas” territories of EU members, so being next to them doesn’t help extend the definition of “European”.)

Also see https://www.europarl.europa.eu/enlargement/briefings/23a2/_en.htm - Morocco is just below Spain and Portugal as you can see on this map, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco#/media/File:Morocco_(orthographic_projection,_WS_claimed).svg - but it was rejected membership in the European Communities. Sadly, based on geographical criteria alone, the case for Canada being “European” is much weaker than Morocco or Turkey.

Back in the day, I had high hopes that the CPTPP would evolve into something similar to the EU with its own version of Schengen.

I like this idea. If we’re just associating rather than becoming full members, that’d also give us more leverage on things like (for example) not adopting the Euro.

That’s exactly the kind of hedging their bets centrist bull

Clarification required. What bets are being hedged here, regarding “there isn’t any point in bilateral talks, but let’s say we’ll do it if he shuts up about that thing that he can’t stop talking about” ? I don’t see a bet and I don’t see a hedge.

We already know they are insincere and there won’t be negotiations because even an agreement would have no value.

Yup, covered in “there isn’t any point in bilateral talks” above.

rather than putting red lines he’s obviously going to cross

Not seeing that any such “red lines” have been put in. The closest is the demand that you-know-who stop talking about you-know-what, but … a red line is “don’t do yak yak, if you do that you cross a red line and we will respond by blah blah” and in this case orange voldemort has already done yak yak and there’s no blah blah response given.

that will just make Canada lose face for nothing.

You’ve got a point here. But the moment that 51st state started to get mentioned, the face was lost. So in this specific category, is there really anything left to lose?

Give the Orange douche a bloody nose right now

Agreed! I’d argue we’re already starting to do that (e.g. Doug Ford’s electric surcharge threat).

I think the answer to 1 is that he doesn’t, so it’s just a good excuse to avoid getting pushed into a situation related to 2. In other words, the POV is likely, “there isn’t any point in bilateral talks, but let’s say we’ll do it if he shuts up about that thing that he can’t stop talking about” - it’s just a way to pin the blame for a lack of talks down South.

Definitely not the case that all USians are following the current mad prez…

Heck, Canada remains a favourite for many from the US still, see https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/03/12/donald-trump-transphobia-us-family-seeking-asylum/ (and good luck to them!)

I wanted to ask - Where on the fediverse are people seeing this? I took a quick peek at lemmy.world/c/politics and lemmy.world/c/world (in particular https://lemmy.world/post/26969666 ) and I didn’t see anything like what this post is describing there.

A lot of the comments from this post point to examples from Spez’s site or Musk’s site, which would make more sense to me. But lemmy? C’mon…

This is wonderful news. Closure for those families at last.

I’m also grateful that the decision to search at this landfill also went differently than for the Brady landfill two years back.