Canada ‘excited’ to move closer to EU after reviewing Britain’s ten-year experiment with doing the opposite
by Rich Smith 2 months ago 
Canada has said it is “extremely excited” about the prospect of a closer relationship with the European Union after reviewing Britain’s comprehensive ten-year experiment into what happens when you do precisely the opposite.
The EU and Canada are discussing significantly closer economic and security ties, including the possibility of a new form of “associate membership”, as Canada looks to deepen relationships beyond an increasingly unpredictable United States.
Canadian officials said the decision had been made considerably easier by Britain generously volunteering itself as a decade-long control experiment.
“Britain has provided an absolutely invaluable dataset,” explained Canadian political analyst Chuck Williams.
“They took an advanced economy with largely frictionless access to a huge neighbouring market and deliberately introduced customs declarations, border checks, additional paperwork, restrictions on labour movement and new barriers for exporters.
“Then they sat back for ten years and carefully measured the resulting damage to trade, investment and economic growth.
“Normally, economic research of this quality would cost billions.
“And rather conveniently, it actually did.”
Canadian researchers were reportedly particularly impressed by Britain’s work demonstrating how small exporters can simply stop selling into their largest overseas market when confronted with sufficient bureaucracy, while food importers discovered the exciting inflationary potential of making it more difficult and expensive to bring products into the country.
Williams continued, “We’ve also studied Britain’s reduced business investment, the hit to productivity and GDP compared with remaining in the EU, the loss of freedom of movement, and the extraordinary achievement of creating a border down the Irish Sea entirely in the name of taking back control of Britain’s borders.
“The results are remarkably consistent.”
Critics have pointed out that Canada isn’t actually in Europe, something officials concede would traditionally have presented a significant obstacle.
“Fortunately, Britain has conclusively demonstrated that actually being in Europe doesn’t necessarily mean you want anything to do with it, so apparently geography is just something you can ignore now.”
Brexit supporter Derek Matthews dismissed Canada’s conclusions, insisting Britain’s experiment had not failed because the important benefits of Brexit were never supposed to be measurable using conventional concepts such as trade, investment, productivity or money.
“You can’t put a price on sovereignty,” he explained.
“Which is fortunate, because every time somebody tries, the number is absolutely fucking enormous.”
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