Canada pushes to become associate member of the EU:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/c ... j-reports/
Carney pushes idea of making Canada ‘associate member’ of EU, WSJ reports
BRUSSELS - Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney wants closer links with the European Union and is exploring whether his country could become an “associate member” of the bloc, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
The EU, which has not been flexible about membership rules in the past, is open to the idea of granting Canada a yet to be created status of associate membership, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed officials both from the EU and Canada.
[...]
Canada and the EU are discussing ways to let Canada’s goods, services and workers involved in strategic supply chains such as energy, AI, defense and critical minerals move freely, thus effectively shifting the EU border, The Wall Street Journal said.
Canada and the EU are also talking about laying underwater cables, jointly constructing data centers, cloud storage and new satellite networks and infrastructure to ship Canadian energy to the EU, the newspaper said.
Carney has spoken regularly with several EU leaders, most notably French President Emmanuel Macron, about the possibility of letting Canadians live and work visa-free in the EU, WSJ said, citing two unnamed officials familiar with the matter.
Not only has Trump fucked up, but so has the UK with Brexit.
The EU is taking this seriously and if Canada is able to become an associate member than how long until Australia or New Zealand or other members of the Commonwealth apply for associate membership?
We used to be the middle man between the EU and the Commonwealth. We were told that, leaving the EU, we'd be alright because of our Commonwealth relations and the trade deals we could make with the rest of the world.
America is a pariah state. You don't want to have any trade deals with American anymore - and when Trump refuses to leave office and American democracy is officially dead, with no excuses to pretend otherwise, and the orange manbaby crying tariffs for the rest of his natural life at the rest of the planet, we'll all wish we'd had the balls to move faster in cutting America out of global trade, like the cancer that it has become.
We've not got any favourable deals from the rest of the world since Brexit - nothing to fanfare over, compared to the "unicorns and rainbows" promised for leaving - and now the rest of the world just isn't interested in the UK at all. Screw the middle man, Canada's going straight to the source of the world's biggest economic market.
It also creates the ridiculous position where Canadians can live and work in France or Germany visa-free, yet the actually-European UK can't. Where they'll increasingly have the benefits of the single market or customs union, while our politicians run scared of suggesting re-joining it.
(Canada will also be making its debut at the Eurovision 2027 as well, by the way. It's following Australia to shift its "associate membership" of the EBU into active participation.)
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
