Canadians prefer joining the EU to getting absorbed by the US. Both options suck

As a Canadian who has spent 17 years working in Europe, I feel qualified to speak on behalf of the few remaining brain cells still on active duty (that would be just 40% of all Canadian neurons, according to a recent poll): Canada has zero interest in joining the European Union.

All some Canadians see when they declare their support for joining the EU are what they perceive to be advantages – which really aren’t. Take the free movement of people across the EU’s effectively borderless Schengen zone. That’s all fine and dandy until the Spanish prime minister decides to grant mass amnesty to the better part of a million migrants, many of whom might then decide to head over to that new EU nation of Canada.

Yet this idiotic topic keeps coming up. In just the latest instance, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, visiting the Canadian capital, was hanging out with central banker finance bro turned Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. They played a fun little butt-slapper of a hockey game, and Stubb talked about how they texted nonstop like teenagers while musing to the Canadian press that Canada joining the EU “would be a marriage made in heaven.” Get a room, you two. But please keep the rest of Canada out of it.

In reality, it would involve requiring every European state to unanimously vote to modify the current EU treaty to include a North American state in a union explicitly limited to geographically European nations. But Stubb said that he foresaw “negotiations that would be faster than Finland joining NATO.” Only if Canadian officials sell out their own voters – something that would have to become a habit as an EU member state.