AMID US president Donald Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Sigmar Gabriel, former German vice chancellor and foreign minister, made a curious suggestion in an interview with German media outlet The Pioneer: invite Canada into the European Union. Soon after, Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium, addressed Canada on X to say that “[t]here is no reason why EU membership should be off the table.” The thought of this North Atlantic alliance excited some Canadians and Europeans—one YouTube video even theorized how “CANEU” (read: canoe) would be a “global superpower.”
To learn more about what the possibilities are for Canada and the EU, I spoke with Mark Camilleri, president and CEO of the Canada EU Trade and Investment Association—CEUTIA—based in Brussels.
“In terms of trade, what similarities do Canada and the EU share?”
There’s a lot of complementarities when you go across sectors. Take mining, for example. Canada has an abundance of natural resources that the EU doesn’t have, but Europe creates and makes a lot of industrial equipment that helps extract those resources. Europe has a certain need for these resources as part of their own economic security.
If you take a look at the fertilizer that Canada produces, Europe needs it to support their agricultural sector. Another example is nuclear energy. Nuclear is going through a renaissance at the moment, and Canada can basically cover the full supply chain from mining uranium to building nuclear reactors.
Canada should nationalize the railroads.
Nationalize all mines, and mining.
We should build a nation car, a basic 4-cycliner car with AWD capabilities, plug-in-hybrd, regenerative braking, easy to repair with parts always available. Make all the software code and hardware schematics free. Have it as one of our military vehicles for basic transport, make it so that all cab companies have to use it, all Uber drivers, delivery drivers, that’s the only car municipalities get to buy for staff, only car Provinces get to buy for staff.
can we nationalize our internet service providers while we’re at it
See, now there’s an actual good idea. That shit’s like the road system.
You have to pay the current shareholders for it all, though, unless you think Canada can go it totally alone and hated.
That last one is pretty difficult to square with the rest.
Is it wheelchair accessible too? If so, how much weight and cost does that add? One could keep going.
This is why economics by political proclamation either turns into 700-page documents or fails dramatically.
What problem(s) does this nationalization and the ‘people’s car’ solve?
Nationalization would improve services. The people’s car solves fuck all, and would be a maintenance nightmare.
Economic resilience, removes foreign control from our key resource companies, creates jobs in country to remove American jobs we’ll be losing enmasse
Problem with the vehicle is that certain government departments need something other than a sedan.