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Originally Posted by isaidso
What a bizarre argument. That has practically no bearing on population change going forward nor would any of those things be required to grow southern Ontario's population 4 fold. Whether Canadians want 58 million people in Southern Ontario is another matter.
I know British politicians/media feed the line to Brits that the UK is a global power (I'm British born) but that hasn't been true for decades. The reality is that we live in a world with 2 extremely powerful countries (China, USA) and then there's everyone else. We're fooling ourselves if we think Germany, Japan, France, the UK, India, etc. play on that same level. None of these are global in their reach and/or capability. The UK is best described as a Middle Power (along with 10-15 other countries) although I realize the term 'Global Power' is more palatable in certain quarters.
And over the long term (50-80 years), I wouldn't be surprised if Australia and Canada grew to become the 2 largest economies in the Western world after the USA. Most of the West is in relative decline. Australia and Canada are still in ascension imo. They'll gradually reel in Italy, France, the UK, and Germany till they're sitting #2 and #3.
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It depends on how one quantifies power.
Militarily, the UK is much more powerful than nations like Germany, Japan and Canada for political reasons. Between their nuclear deterrent and their force projection abilities, they've an ability to influence world events. In that sense, France might be its closest equal.
For economic power, the UK, Germany and Japan do make up a good chunk of the global heft for different areas. The UK provides capital/banking power, Germany and Japan industrial power. Depending on how one takes a view on power, the UK is definitely in the second-tier of nations by power.
Canada is somewhat of a weird outlier. We were
almost second-tier for a bit post-WWII to the early 2000s. Not too shabby for a nation of 12-35 million people.
Now, we're not militarily powerful and have declined there since the Cold War. We're not a political force on the world stage anymore. We have a large GDP, but we seemingly produce less high-technology things as time goes on. So, we're deviating back to our historical roots of resource production, which makes the GDP large, but might offer a finite upper bound to our growth. Unless our mentality changes in the future?