I’m a dual Canadian-EU citizen and I oppose Canada joining the EU. I’m all for tighter relations of course but there are parts of the EU legal and economic framework that Canada should not have anything to do with.

Most importantly, the EU rules for state aid make it impossible to implement democratic socialist policies that remove sectors of the economy from the for-profit market. The public options that new NDP leader Avi Lewis is proposing to correct market failures become legally impossible. The bold ecosocialist policies needed to transition away from the planet killing economic policies, predicated on infinite growth, become legally impossible.

Beyond that, joining the EU means signing on to the Stability and Growth Pact and taking up the commitment to join the Eurozone. The SGP would have made even the left-liberal policies of first term Trudeau impossible. The Euro structurally ties the Canadian economy with that of Germany’s and its sclerotic fiscal dogmatism. (You’re goddamn right I haven’t forgotten how the Eurogroup treated Varoufakis’ reasonable proposals with contempt and condemned Greece to decades of unnecessary misery.) Canada does not need them.

Of course, if the EU were to reform and climb down from the doctrinaire neoliberalism that underwrites many of its most important treaties, I would be open to changing my mind. But as it is, nope, nope, nope.