Hi, War with Canada is hardly a question. We're already at war. PEI potatoes have been totally unfairly declared unfit for the US market, which is going a long way to destroying the economy of an entire province. This is nothing more than a malicious trade sanction. Our higher quality softwood lumber exports are being pummeled and penalized, because all yours are privately owned and the prices are jacked up. NAFTA has trashed our magazine and film industries. It also is being used as a lever to pave the way for guaranteed fresh water exports from Canada whether we want to or not. BC Hydro has been piping electricity to California for months to help out with the power shortage and hasn't recieved a dime for it yet. You want to drill out the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and destroy the calving grounds of the caribou herd that feeds and supports a good portion of the indigenous population of the Yukon Territory (Yes, it's in Canada) for a mere SIX MONTH supply of oil. There's an American oil pipeline being planned for the North West Territory that goes from Alaska under the ice in the Beaufort Sea to Inuvik. A blowout in this underwater pipe (they all have blowouts sooner or later) would wipe marine life for thousands of square kilometres.
Every time we try to defend our sovereignty in any way, some congressman stands up on his hind legs, and bellows in elephantine rage that we taking unfair advantage of trade with a country with ten times the population, and a history of nuclear bomb use. It is with no small amount of chagrin that I watch our Prime Minister kiss yankee butt and beg for a north american dollar, and yet more American imperialism, while we get kicked in the head. By the time the US has finished draining Canada of all its resources, there would be no point for a war since there'd be nothing left worth taking.
You people have no idea what it's like on this side of the line, watching successive governments posting FOR RENT signs on our foreheads, watching our culture (such as it is) being McDonaldized, watching our health care systems being privatized to follow the American model, seeing our publishing industry weakened to the point that our school textbooks are being printed in New Jersey, watching the processess of our national elections being pulled down in the American muckraking style of mudslinging, and even seeing the spelling of the language we use being altered to fit the American model.
You may talk about war with Canada as if it were some amusing little sidebar to the end of the 11:00 news. Well, some of us up here don't see it that way. There's a world out there that has a myriad of histories, languages, economies, and cultures that have nothing to do with the US. Canadians are part of that world. We don't want to be sucked up and spat out by anyone. If we are at war, and I think trade wars can be no more condoned than the ones where you drop napalm and agent orange on someone else's kids, then on my behalf and that of my family, I'd like to ask you to please stop. If there are those reading this who have no idea where I'm coming from, figure it out. Just like the whos in Dr. Suess's book(yes, I know it's American, but hey, it IS Dr.Suess), we are here, we are here, we are heeeeeeeeeeere...SPLAT. Fuming
Owl.