With a population of 5.3 million, Scotland would become Canada’s third largest province, after Ontario (13.9 million) and Quebec (8.3 million). Our country’s current population is 36.5 million. With Scotland, in a country of 41.8 million, the new province would represent 12.6 per cent of the population, as compared with 8 per cent of the 65 million people in the U.K. And it gets better. Add the 4.7 million Canadians who claim Scottish heritage and you’ve got a cornerstone population of 10 million – nearly 25 per cent of the country’s total. Isn’t that what they call a power block?
.. Obviously, Scotland would not be a typical province. It would be unlike nine of the current ten. But consider Quebec. In 2006, the Government of Canada passed a motion recognizing “that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada.” Quebec has its own ministry of international relations, whose mission is to “promote and defend Quebec’s interests internationally.” Like Quebec, Scotland would be distinct, but differently. And Canadians know how to accommodate difference... But let’s think about the EU. What if, after Brexit, Scotland applied to rejoin, not as a nation of 5.3 million, but as part of a country of 41.8 million. Obviously, it would have more clout. For Canadians, Scotland would establish a foothold in multicultural Europe. So, while the Tories in Britain and the Republicans in the United States set about creating a neo-liberal Anglosphere – anti-egalitarian, avowedly Christian, pro-Big Business, pro-military – Scotland becomes part of Canada and helps lead the way to a more progressive world. Here comes Ireland, north and south. Here comes Wales. It’s a Celtic wave, and yes, it’s bringing cheaper whisky.
We’re about to find out exactly how populist Britain really is
It will largely reject the authority of the European Court of Justice, even though some form of cross-border dispute settlement is an inevitable feature of an interdependent world. It will probably leave the European Single Market, one of the deepest and most successful experiments in globalization.
the E.U. recently demanded that Britain agree to a stiff “exit bill” before other negotiations start. The bill would reflect E.U. spending projects to which Britain previously committed, plus pension promises to E.U. bureaucrats; the amount remains unknown, but the most frequently cited estimate is about $60 billion — roughly what Britain spends annually on defense.
.. Meanwhile, May is stalling Scotland’s loud demandsfor another independence referendum. But the Scots, who voted to remain in the European Union, will not be reconciled to Brexit if they are denied a say in whether it applies to them.
.. A surprise recovery in the world economy has concealed the economic cost of Brexit; for the moment, British industry benefits from the post-referendum collapse in the exchange rate but has yet to pay the price of lost Single Market access.