Canada’s possible problems with a CANZUK alliance
The concept of CANZUK already has widespread support amongst Canadian Conservatives with one of the front runners for the upcoming leadership election, Erin O Toole, seeking to prioritise an agreement after being elected into government.
For the most part, most conservative Brexiteers insist that Britain’s future is only secure if the country relies less on both US security and European economic cooperation in favour of a CANZUK alliance. CANZUK refers to a new proposed alliance of free trade, movement and interdependent foreign cooperation between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. As William Harrison argued in an article the proposed CANZUK alliance could have a combined population of some 135 million and a combined GDP that would place it third in the world.
The concept of CANZUK already has widespread support amongst Canadian Conservatives with one of the front runners for the upcoming leadership election, Erin O Toole, seeking to prioritise an agreement after being elected into government.
Overall this project seems alluring at first, but since having spent just under a year living in London Ontario, I’ve come to see just how the Canadian participation in this ‘CANZUK’ project would be contentious, especially when one considers the political realities of Canada’s existing framework.
Undeniably evident, polling does indicate majority support amongst the ten Canadian provinces (including Quebec) for some form of CANZUK cooperation.
And yet the general attitude of Canadians towards the UK is more perplexing than first thought. To simply assume that Canada would embrace a new CANZUK arrangement is rather reflective of British ignorance regarding Canadian matters.
In the years since Canada’s constitutional independence from the UK in 1982, the country has strived into being an independent state, with its own sense of self in regard to pursuing trade agreements and independent foreign relations.
On free trade alone Canada trades more with the USA than with Australia, NZ and the UK combined. Since the signing of free trade with the USA back in 1988, Canadian preferences for trade have tended to focus on both Liberal and Conservative politicians taking any opportunity to build upon the existing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
In the thirty-two years from the signing of the Free Trade Accords with the USA, Canadian infrastructure has merged with US rail and interstate highway networks with over ninety per cent of all Canadians living within sixty-three miles of the USA’s border. The trading relationship between the US and Canada is the largest in the world with over $1.5bn USD transacted every day. Canada is also the USA’s largest oil supplier with the USA being the top destination for Canadian tourists and emigrants.
Even if Canada wanted to diversify its trade, away from the USA and Mexico, it seems pretentious for Canada to prioritise trading cooperation with the UK, Australia and New Zealand over growing powerhouse regions including India, Latin America and Indochina.
In addition to trade, calls for free movement exclusively between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK would also cultivate a new swathe of problems in regard to how Canada would administrate Anglo migration. Reforms to Canadian immigration has to uphold a balance as Canada is considered a union between “two founding nations” (Britain and France).
Already the relationship between Francophone and Anglophone Canadians is contentious; the French Province of Quebec having toiled with the notion of separatism on two separate occasions.
Hence it would be extremely difficult to justify a policy of promoting free movement between Canada and other Anglo Commonwealth countries at the expense of sidelining free movement arrangements with emerging Francophone nations.
And simply by sharing customs and the same head of state, we shouldn’t assume that Canada wishes to be considered an extension of the UK in North America under any CANZUK arrangement. What most Brits don’t recognise is the Crown alone is an awkward institution to which Canadians are rather indifferent to at most. Increasingly for Canadians, the British Monarchy is seen more as a hangover from a bygone era which hasn’t yet been ratified because of two temporal realities.
Politically speaking it is difficult for majority consent to be reached to change the constitution; changes to the Constitution Act of 1982 can be made only if seven out of ten Canadian provinces (representing at least fifty per cent of the population) agree with the proposed change. For the time being it seems unlikely that the pro-republican Province of Quebec could abolish the role of the Crown in the Constitution without agreement from more Anglocentric Provinces including Alberta, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. Additionally, republican sentiment in Canada is weak, not because of strong loyalty to the British crown, but rather because the institution of monarchy is an extension of a ’non-American mentality’ that is inseparable to the Canadian identity.
In truth, the Canada of today is not the same Canada to which Britain turned its back on in favour of the European Economic Community back in 1973. In spite of sharing similar customs, including a monarch, the country has forged maximum independence from Britain and has affirmed her own identity in pursuing mosaic multiculturalism, commiting to free trade through NAFTA and continuing a balancing act that respects the interests of Quebec, a distinct French Nation within a predominantly Anglophone Continent.
If Brexiteers wish to seek closer ties with Canada the very least it could do is to recognise Canada as an emerging global power and not as an extension of British affairs under any Post-Brexit CANZUK arrangement.
