Austin Bay breathes life into the old bogey that scares Canada and gives secret pleasure to us jingoistic Yankees: the "domino effect" of Quebec nationalism causing Canada's western provinces to join the U.S. Here's my question: legally speaking, is such even possible?
Let's say that Quebec goes, and then British Columbia and Alberta follow suit, as do New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, P.E. Island, and inevitably, Newfoundland, leaving the Dominion of Canada with Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nunavut, and the Yukon and Northwest Territories.
Do the inhabitants of B.C. and Alberta, even as an independent entity, have any standing under U.S. Law to petition Congress for entry? Wouldn't we have to annex the territory first, and THEN grant statehood?
The only precedent we have to guide is is that of Texas, which joined the U.S. after ten years as an independent republic and fifteen years as part of Mexico. It's not the best precedent, either. To begin with, most of the Texans who led the independence movement, with a few notable exceptions, were former U.S. citizens who had moved south of the Louisiana purchase. So the Texans who petitioned Congress to join the U.S. in 1837 and again in 1844 were, by extraction, U.S. citizens "coming home." No such status exists for British Columbians or Albertans.
Moreover, if there's anything the Texas affair demonstrates, it's that these matters are not going to be easy. Tensions with Mexico over the Texas Annexation led to war. We might scoff at the possibility of Paul Martin playing Santa Anna, but no pol likes his constituency reduced without his consent. Especially not to the disliked imperialist southern neighbor.
The irony of quiet, sensible Canada becoming the powder-keg of North America makes it normally a scenario kept to Diplomacy games and South Park movies. But the world has seen stranger things.
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