Essays in Idleness

Should Canada, and Greenland, join the United States? I am still inclined to say, no. Instead, Canada should be devolved, or split, into faux-sovereign provinces, themselves further split where they are over-large. (I think Prince Edward Island is the only province whose area we got right.) Southern Ontario, for instance, could be divided into at least five of these new “sovereignties,” with capitals in Ottawa, Kingston, Orillia, Parkdale, and “London” (Forest City), &c. I do not have opinions on how northern Ontario or Greenland ought to be dissected, but I’m fairly clear on independence for Cape Breton. Indeed, neither do I have an opinion about how snow should be cleared from this municipality; only that someone ought to do it, and that the (socialist) City of Toronto, “administered” by Olivia Chow-Chow, ought not to be involved.

But rather as, in the British Empire, many territories became “protectorates” of the United Kingdom, these post-Canadian and Greenlandic states should become protectorates of the United States, on the model of Guam and American Samoa (though perhaps with our own symbolic duchies and monarchies). We would pay perhaps 5 percent of our GDP to the States to provide us with defence, under an Iron Dome, and in turn they could provide us with some employment. This makes sense because, traditionally, Canadians made good soldiers, and will make them again once our governments are collapsed.

The advantages for us could be many and profound. While it is not always good to be a small nation, especially when one is over-burdened with natural resources, it is better if one has a powerful protector. I call this the “Lyle Winfield effect”; for once my aggressive schoolmates understood that Lyle was my personal enforcer, they began to leave me alone.

Rather than ambassadors, the Americans could send us lieutenant-governors, which we would of course pronounce “leftenant” governors, who could host each of our New Year’s Levées. Indeed he, or she, would have little else to do, with the termination of democracy in all of these northern realms, until other ceremonial activities were invented.

Economic improvements might be substantial. Now that the (per capita) GDP of both Canada and Greenland have fallen below that of Alabama, and will soon be overtaken by Mexico and perhaps Bolivia, too, the services of modern, progressive governments ought to be reviewed.

Surely we have tired of them by now.