Advocates for a US-Canada merger?

Over the weekend the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed from journalist, author, and dual Canadian-American citizen Diane Francis in which she summarizes the argument in her latest book Merger of the Century: Why Canada and America Should Become One Country. The crux of Francis' argument:

"Such a merger makes perfect sense. No two countries on Earth are as socially and economically integrated as the U.S. and Canada. They share geography, values and a gigantic border. Their populations study, travel and do business together and intermarry in great numbers. If they were corporations (or European states), they would have merged a long time ago. And each has what the other needs: The U.S. has capital, manpower, technology and the world's strongest military; Canada has vast reserves of undeveloped resources."

For Francis believes that in order to survive in the competition among nations for economic supremacy, that the U.S. and Canada "...increasingly find themselves staring down the barrel of state capitalism, as practiced above all by China, whose state-owned enterprises and sovereign-wealth funds have made a concerted effort to capture markets and resources."

Francis' book is significant from the perspective of understanding what progressives are thinking, especially in context of pushes to further integrate the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

We will be reviewing the book shortly.