But it wouldn't work.
For one thing, the EU involves free movement of people as well as goods and capital. There is effectively a border around the member states: enter one legally, and you can move to the next one with relative ease. That just wouldn't work with us having an ocean in between, and that great big undefended border to the south. I mean, it would work as far as the right to move across borders went, the right to live and work in one of the other countries, but the logistics would be difficult.
There's also just the whole natural flow of trade thing. We trade with the US because it is efficient to do so. Proximity is a very definite asset. And the two economies have been, to some extent, organized around that trade flow: the fact that we're each other's biggest trade partners obviously affects what we produce. To partner up with Europe instead, we'd likely have to make some big structural adjustments to our economy. Although they'd undoubtedly want some of our beef and grain and whatnot too, they couldn't really get access to our hydroelectricity and natural gas, for instance.
What we are doing is putting increasing emphasis on the Americas, e.g. through our relatively new membership in the Organisation of American States. And that makes sense, in terms of both trade and opportunities for global influence.
Here's one example of things being done at the Americas level:
http://www.pch.gc.ca/progs/ai-ia/ridp-irpd/02/cartagena_e.cfmDECLARATION OF CARTAGENA DE INDIAS
Within the framework of the commitments made at the Third Summit of the Americas of 2001, we the Ministers and highest appropriate governmental authorities responsible for cultural policies in the Americas met under the auspices of the Organization of American States (OAS) and within the framework of the Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CIDI) in order to discuss and take up in depth cooperation on cultural diversity and to establish more dynamic and efficient cooperation between our countries. For that purpose, we set forth the following declaration: ...
That kind of stuff (cultural diversity policy) -- and things like "democratic development":
http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/cida_ind.nsf/0/875d036adf5dbad285256c41004751c5?OpenDocument-- are Canada's meat and potatoes in the international arena.
Of course, free trade is an eternal thorn:
http://www.straightgoods.com/item371.shtmlhttp://www.ichrdd.ca/english/commdoc/prelease/OASrights.html edit -- But what I meant to say was: by all means, absolutely, we should diversify our trading relations, and strengthen our cultural and political relationships with other parts of the world, including the EU, whenever possible!
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