RE: The end of Canada
Canada is having some serious division issues, just like the US. Ontario and the Maritimes are probably closer to the Northeast US, and BC is probably closer to the US Pacific coast, than are either to the prairie provinces. Gerographically, the breakdown is very similar to the US breakdown between the highly urban and financially oriented coasts, versus the more rural and natural resource and agriculture oriented heartland. And of course Quebec is its own world, unfortunately not able to sustain itself economically.
I have wondered about a possible realignment of North America into three or four (depending on Quebec) more ideologically compatible regions, of which two might unite.
1) Ontario, the Maritimes, New England, the North Atlantic, and Great Lakes states (say Maryland, West Virginia, every state north and east of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and every state touching the Great Lakes) with or without Quebec.
2) California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, possibly Nevada and BC (which might unite with group 1).
3) Everything else--the South, the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, the Canadian Prairie Provinces, and Alaska.
Not sure where Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut would shake out. Yukon and NWT probably go with Alaska and 3), Nunavut probably prefers 1).
Zeihan has opined in the past that Alberta might be the tipping point--resource rich and being hammered for cash to keep the Maritimes and the Quebec compromise afloat, and under Canadian law they have the right to secede. I could see a realignment being triggered, and quite frankly I think the two sides are both so divided, on both sides of the current border, that this might well be the best solution.
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