CANZUK International - "merger" of UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Acajack

If we are talking trade routes France is also a lot closer geographically to Canada than Australia and New Zealand...

Literally a lot closer if you include St. Pierre and Miquelon, tens of kilometers away from Canada, but probably that adds little to trading routes.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by lio45

("Old-stock Canadians" generated a minor shitstorm, IIRC. Seems to me on the contrary to be a pretty direct equivalent to "Québécois de souche". Is there a preferred way of referring to people who aren't immigrants?)

I would say "native-born Canadians" rather than native Canadians.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Why should we just have one with UK/Aus?NZ? We are an officially bi-lingual country so why would we exclude France?

Canada has far bigger fish to fry on trade than this and I say concentrate all efforts on the EU.

Out of all possible trade scenarios, it's probably most interesting financially for Canada to just make the compromises necessary to save NAFTA.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

I was looking for a way the other day to express that I was talking about the people who have been here for centuries, decided to forgo using "native Canadians" because it could be confused with "aboriginals", and now I don't even remember what word I used.

("Old-stock Canadians" generated a minor shitstorm, IIRC. Seems to me on the contrary to be a pretty direct equivalent to "Québécois de souche". Is there a preferred way of referring to people who aren't immigrants?)

We're all immigrants, except for the aboriginal population, right? So your point is moot anyway.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Relaxed or secular Muslims I imagine would adapt to the Canadian reality quickly as well (language aside). .......

Relaxed or secular Muslims adapt to Canadian society every bit as well as relaxed and secular Greek Orthodox people, relaxed and secular Hindu people, relaxed and secular Baha'i people, relaxed and secular Yazidi people, relaxed and secular Lutheran people, relaxed and secular Taoist people, etc.

[Capsicum]

I would say "native-born" Canadians applies to anyone who's literally not foreign-born or immigrated from elsewhere, and then maybe "multi-generational Canadians" for those with families with longer histories in Canada more broadly.

Interestingly, the acceptability of native in popular discourse to mean "born there" but not necessarily aboriginal probably varies based on specificity of location. For example, a "native Torontonian", like "native New Yorker", or "native Quebecois", or "native Californian" seems more acceptable than "Native Canadian or Native American" which implies aboriginal descent representing the country as a whole. But if you were to say native to mean native-born but non-aboriginal in places where there really are a lot of aboriginal people in Canada, it might be frowned upon, just like in the US how "Native Alaskan" or "Native Hawaiian" has a different connotation compared to "native New Yorker", even though in theory they are all states anyone can be born in.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

We're all immigrants, except for the aboriginal population, right? So your point is moot anyway.

"Except for"? We're all immigrants. Some of us crossed the Atlantic 400 years ago, others crossed the Bering Strait 10,000 years ago. All the same thing.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by lio45

"Except for"? We're all immigrants. Some of us crossed the Atlantic 400 years ago, others crossed the Bering Strait 10,000 years ago. All the same thing.

One can't really "immigrate" to an uninhabited landmass.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

One can't really "immigrate" to an uninhabited landmass.

On the topic of labels like "immigrant", "emigrant", "settler", "colonist" etc.

"Emigrant', of course, was the standard term for out-migrant, and was well established in the English language, in contrast to the French, by the eighteenth century."

"Before 1790, Americans thought of themselves as emigrants, not immigrants. The word immigrant was an Americanism probably invented in that year. It had entered common usage by 1820"

"Pioneer in the western sense first appeared in 1817."

"In Britain, 'settler' was used in its current meaning at least as far back as the seventeenth century, but it was used infrequently. By the early nineteenth century it had connotations of a higher status than 'emigrant'. Like colonists, settlers were distinct from sojourners, slaves, or convicts, and initially even from lower-class free emigrants."

Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=KeinrQ...20themselves%20as%20emigrants%22&f=false

[lio45]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

One can't really "immigrate" to an uninhabited landmass.

Agreed, but using the same logic the people who created modern Canada out of the former wilderness of this continent by importing their architecture, technology, institutions, etc. were not "immigrants" but rather "colonists".

Your point makes the "nearly all of us are immigrants" logic crumble, when taking it into account.

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

What I think matters more to a multiracial country like Canada is how well the new immigrants meld into the broader society. By and large, most Europeans and most east and south Asians do quite well. Africans perhaps a little less well, and middle eastern Muslims the worst of all. The country is mostly colour blind. We just don't want our immigrants to be troublesome......

Do you have any evidence to back up any of the assertions made here, or is this a mixture of gut feelings and lazy stereotypes?

Although not a comment on your specific observations, it is important to note that non-immigrants play a substantial role in the integration of newcomers. When various immigrant groups are compared to each other, different outcomes re: integration may result from several factors, including the prejudices of non-immigrants.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by FFX-ME

France has not been as good to us. They nearly caused our country to break in three and led to societal breaks that still exist.

France's involvement in the two Quebec referendums was fairly minimal, and they were certainly not a main factor in why separation was being considered. For what it's worth, the proverbial "grosse anglaise chez Eaton qui ne parle pas français" likely played a bigger role.

Originally Posted by FFX-ME

We also generally have more culturally in common with the anglosphere than la francophonie; that includes francophones, of which I am one.

About 85% of the francophones in Canada are Québécois. I strongly doubt most of them have more affinities for the UK than they do for France, or that they feel they have more in common with the anglosphere. (Though there is more there than is usually acknowledged, it is true.)

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by lio45

"Except for"? We're all immigrants. Some of us crossed the Atlantic 400 years ago, others crossed the Bering Strait 10,000 years ago. All the same thing.

Originally Posted by Acajack

We're all immigrants, except for the aboriginal population, right? So your point is moot anyway.

oof, I can smell the passive aggression in those. muh foundational community.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

oof, I can smell the passive aggression in that one.

Just so you know, I don't consider the Canadian-born children of my African neighbours to be "immigrants".

Why?

Because they're not.

A person born in the country can't be considered an immigrant.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

The natives of Canada are not European.

They effectively are. The indigenous peoples for all intents and purposes no longer exist in any meaningful sense. Colonization was like hitting the reset button, as though nothing existed before and the country was discovered anew. And it is the descendants of the colonists and the descendants of the countrymen of the colonists who largely control the country, by for example giving preferential status to their own traditions and values, and determining who is allowed to enter, stay or even become a member of the tribe. It's their country.

Look at how lio describes it:

"Agreed, but using the same logic the people who created modern Canada out of the former wilderness of this continent by..."

These are often the same people who express concern about Canada being viewed as some "cultural blank slate" instead of giving due respect to the foundational nature of its European communities. It wasn't mere colonization like say, in Kenya. It was fashioning a country anew from raw wilderness. Back then, it was a blank slate.

And frankly, while phrasing it that way evokes concerns, it's a view that in many implicit ways has widespread acceptance.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

PEI actually has a lot of recent immigrants now for its size. It may be in the thousands, but having over three thousand people who immigrated in the period 2011-2016 is a lot for an island of around 150, 000 people. It's like having 2% of the population arriving in the last five years.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-immigrant-population-1.4370892

That's awesome. PEI is beautiful.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Just so you know, I don't consider the Canadian-born children of my African neighbours to be "immigrants".

Why?

Because they're not.

A person born in the country can't be considered an immigrant.

That's fine, I'm okay with that definition of native. I used it in that way to distinguish between people born in Canada and people who immigrated to Canada.

But what you said was:
"We're all immigrants, except for the aboriginal population, right? So your point is moot anyway."

Maybe I'm not picking up what you're putting down but that's a pretty passive aggressive way to get that point across. Maybe passive aggressive is the wrong term... snarky?

Whatever man, express yourself however you please.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

It wasn't mere colonization like say, in Kenya. It was fashioning a country anew from raw wilderness. Back then, it was a blank slate.

Both cases are colonization. One case is usually called "settler colonialism" where colonists displaced the indigenous inhabitants to have land to build the colonists' own society, in contrast to "resource exploitation colonialism" where the colonists owned the land for the goal of extracting resources from it, without intention to settle.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Both cases are colonization. One case is usually called "settler colonialism" where colonists displaced the indigenous inhabitants to have land to build the colonists' own society, in contrast to "resource exploitation colonialism" where the colonists owned the land for the goal of extracting resources from it, without intention to settle.

Yup, that's true. But worthwhile to distinguish settler colonies that still have substantial indigenous populations and metis/meszito populations from say, Canada, the US and Australia.

[Capsicum]

It also gets complicated with cases like Jamaica, Guyana, etc. where the majority is neither primarily descended from the European colonists responsible for taking the land to begin with, nor the indigenous population whose population was devastated, but involuntary slaves, or indentured labourers, who were taken to replace the labor the natives would have provided, a product of "planter colonialism".