Guest Post; Dominion Libre : La canadianité repensée
Pensées et articles sur l'histoire, la politique et l'identité canadiennes. 06 March, 2010
Turks and Caicos: Has Canada missed the boat to her own slice of tropical paradise?
As Canada comes down from the high of the 2010 Winter Olympics, from the ecstatic explosion of joy unleashed by Sidney Crosby’s winning goal and from the initial surge of pride and satisfaction that our Canadian athletes set a world record for Winter Olympic gold, everyday life after such a climax might seem a bit mundane for a while.I too have written about this subject on several occasions, and I still think it's a great idea.
Luckily, we are comforted by an unlikely consolation: the weather. Winter is slowly but surely coming to an end. Sunshine and positive temperatures abound across the country this week. As I write these very words, they are announcing a magnificent 7° for Waterloo Region (only in Canada can someone be so excited by 7° C).
Spring is almost here with summer not far behind and Canadians are all smiles (less the recession, unemployment, mediocre budget, and the PC battles to include women in the national anthem and gays in the immigrant guide).
Many Canadians, including myself, just can’t hack it during the winter.
After the initial charm of the first snow, the first Tim Horton’s hot cocoa, the first time you get to break out your tuque and mits, the first trip to the outdoor skating rink etc. comes the first time you slip and bust your ass on the side walk, the first time you notice that your shoes are being eaten away by the industrial salt and the first time you think you might have actually gotten frostbite and/or windburn.
Sooner or later, every Canadian says to himself ‘god damn it’, and if he has the resources will buy himself a weeklong trip somewhere warm where he can take care of his vitamin D deficiency and basically just bake in the sun with no regrets except the flight home.
The most popular destinations are Cuba and the Dominican Republic, so much so that it’s become relatively cheap to fly there from any of the major Canadian airports.
But what if you didn’t actually have to leave the country to take your mini-break from the merciless sub-zero temperatures of the Canadian winter?
What if, like Britain, the US, France and the Netherlands, Canada had it’s own Caribbean hotspot?
Most Canadians laugh at such pretensions, for Canada is not important enough to have overseas territories.
But what they might not know is that there’s a piece of tropical heaven in the Caribbean that has wanted to join Canada for the last 100 years, with Parliament seriously discussing it more than once, and in that time we have stupidly been missing the boat time and time again. Now we might have missed it for good.
Turks and Caicos, a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, is a twin chain of islands that is home to around 36,000 residents.
The archipelago is a hot tourist destination, speaks English and has traditionally enjoyed a low unemployment rate. Best of all, the average winter temperature there hovers just under 30° C.
Most of the banks there are Canadian, but the islands currently use the US dollar for tourism purposes.
Canadian annexation of the islands would be (or would have been) a win-win. The adoption of the Canadian dollar would have been beneficial for tourists from not only Canada who would have been able to use their own currency without losing money in an exchange, but also to those from the US and Europe who would have benefitted from the favourable exchange rates, attracting more tourists and more revenue for the benefit of the Islanders.
Canada would have had a Caribbean naval outpost and most importantly, a sunny place to call home 365 days a year. The islands inhabitants would have enjoyed full Canadian citizenship, yet been able to keep a rather high level of autonomy.
Canada’s Caribbean dream, however, may be over for a few reasons.
The most recent polls suggest that 60% of the islands’ residents are still favourable to joining Canada, but this is quite a change from the 80% only a few years earlier.
This is probably due to the British Overseas Territory Act of 2002, which reinstated full British citizenship to the Islanders. To make things even more difficult, the formerly self-governing territory has recently seen their right to self government suspended and are now under direct British rule.
The UK government has cited corruption in the territorial legislature and administration as the reason, but it is quite curious that this benevolent re-subjugation should arrive at the same time as massive British petroleum exploitation in the Islands gets underway.
Apparently, the UK has conveniently accused five of its overseas territories of incompetent self-governance, and has been aggressively reiterating its sovereignty in the Caribbean region particularly.
This coincides with the general realisation of the massive oil potential of the Caribbean region. But unlike the Falklands, British interference in the Caribbean territories is unwelcome and the UK’s newfound concern for the quality of the territories’ self government is dubious at best.
With Turks and Caicos now under direct British rule, and for such obvious reasons, the people of these Islands probably couldn’t join Canada even if they were hell bent on it, for they have been unilaterally deprived of their mechanism of self-determination, the territorial legislative assembly.
As a result of British obstruction, they have seen jobs eliminated, profitable resorts closed, have been forced to take out loans to repay British governmental services they didn’t ask for in the first place and are being taxed unforgivingly without a single word to say about it, without any democratic representation.
The UN has condemned the situation, but honestly I hate to even point that out because the UN can’t go five minutes without condemning something and reality has proved time and again that nobody gives a rat’s ass.
So in light of all these developments, is it too late for Canada to come to her senses and extend a welcoming hand to the people of Turks and Caicos?
To be sure, it would have been easier to bring them in back when the British didn’t give a damn about them and saw them as more of a burden than anything else.
But with general unrest among the Islands’ population, I think it might not be too late to make one last stand.
It would take a lot of courage and chutzpah on Canada’s part, but we basically would need to publicly come out and invite the Turks and Caicos to join Canada under a new, special status of Canadian Overseas Territory, or Canadian Protectorate.
They don’t have a large enough population to realistically become a province, and becoming a territory puts them directly under federal jurisdiction.
To allow the Islanders to enjoy Canadian citizenship while at the same time allowing them control over their own natural resources, the way a province would have, would require the creation of a new status.
Seeing as how the Islanders are completely disenfranchised at the moment by direct British rule, they would have no way of independently voting on whether to accept Canada’s invitation, so the battle may already be lost.
We could only hope that the public invitation would generate enough attention to put pressure on the British to allow a binding referendum on the subject, held on the Islands only (not in the UK) for the Islanders to vote on themselves without hindrance from British authorities.
So listen up, Canada.
We are faced with our first chance since the War to once again be liberators, to save a people from being abused and robbed by foreigners while at the same time gaining a precious stretch of paradise where we can chillax for a week or two in the winter without ever leaving home.
The Turks and Caicos would be the masters of their own natural resources and Canada would enjoy the sweet taste of expansion for the first time since 1949 when Newfoundland entered confederation. The only losers in the scenario are the British, and frankly it serves them right.
But let’s not kid ourselves, it will be a cold day in hell (and a warm day in Nunavut) before any government of ours will have the vision or the balls to stand up and do something that bold and cool.
But it’s not impossible, and if you agree with me, write your MP, write the Prime Minister, join a Facebook group and keep talking publicly about the subject and maybe we can make it happen for winter 10-11.
Now all we need is the will to "git 'er done!"
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Kathleen said;
I keep telling people if I'd had the option I would have gone to Turks and Caicos instead of Texas.
If Canada were to annex them I might reconsider. Especially if this anti-health care movement continues to foil the advancement towards either a public option or single payor health insurance in the US.
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available as an E-Book H E R E! and H E R E! And as a paperback H E R E ! and H E R E !
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