Should it happen? Probably.
Will it happen? Never.
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Originally Posted by MTLskyline
In addition, New Brunswick is the only one of the three that is officially bilingual, whereas PEI and NS are not. Acadians would see their demographic and political weight further reduced. There would need to be some guarantee that the new province would be bilingual - which might be controversial in the regions that are almost entirely anglophone...
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Originally Posted by kwoldtimer
Moncton would be the only logical choice, imho, given the need for the new consolidate province to be officially bilingual (I take that as a given, others might disagree).
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Originally Posted by MonctonRad
The real stumbling block to Maritime union however would be the Acadian population. At 33% of NB, they are constantly battling for their status in our single province. In a larger unified province, they would be 300,000 out of 1.8M, or only 16% of the overall population. At less than 20%, it would be nigh on impossible for them to argue for the full duality of services that they currently aspire to in NB. If there were ever a serious attempt at Maritime union in the future, expect a vigorous constitutional challenge from the Acadian people.
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Francophone and Acadian demographic size and political weight are reducing with or without a Maritime Union. Francophone-speakers will be seeing large reductions in their overall population in the next 10/20 years due to aging, demographics, and relocation. Provincial ridings in NB have already been reconfigured to show this trend and will continue to do so in the future. There is currently a large population shift occurring in the province as it becomes less rural and francophone and more urban and anglophone. This will only continue and increase in the near future.
Francophones accounted for roughly 30% of the population at the turn of this century and will be around 27% in the 2016 Census, currently dropping roughly 1% every five years. Acajack and I went over this in the Speech Variation thread on this forum a few days back but the aging of the Acadian population, as well as the lack of exogamous passing down of language between Anglo/Frano couples, means that the French language in NB will slowly erode. What is 28% today will be 20% in a relatively short time frame.
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Originally Posted by Antigonish
I think a good compromise would be merging health/education or something, but not a full on merger.
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I agree. I think we should have a regionalized health/education service as well as a regionalized liquor control board. Despite the bureaucratic issues with ALC it still functions well as a regional entity. More of these would be better for the region as a whole IMO.
As a whole there is way too much infighting between the provinces for this to ever work. Maritimers very much identify with local identity more than regional identity. I'm a Saint Johner first, New Brunswicker second. If i'm outside the region i'm a Maritimer. There's enough bickering and infighting and local jealously that I can't imagine we would ever sit down at a table and agree at anything. There's enough infighting within NB itself, and Nova Scotia as well, that it seems logistically impossible in my head. There are a lot of things we can do better as a region but on the whole the idea of a unified province is DOA, I think. You can look around threads on the Atlantic subforum and see people moaning about one city getting something over another or one city having something so another city should have it too. It's exhausting.
The whole capital debate will never really be resolved. Halifax and Haligonians see themselves as the regional centre, deservedly so, and would argue for every service and point of interest governmentally to be centered there. Moncton would disagree, citing central logistics, whilst PEI loses everything and gains relatively little. What's in it for Saint John? Fredericton? Northern New Brunswick? Cape Breton? PEI? South Shore NS? What do those areas gain by decentralizing and recentralizing?
As a Saint Johner what do I get out of moving my capital to Fredericton, where it shouldn't even have been in the first place, to
Moncton of all places? Or
Halifax? There would have to be a serious regional populist/anti-Canadian,
screw everybody else that isn't a Maritimer attitude for this to ever conceivably happen.
In the end, what could trigger more support for this would be a change in the federal electoral voting system which would allow for smaller regional parties to take shape as votes/seats are distributed proportionally or more fairly. With something improved in place a regional Atlantic Canadian party could form, and then you have your first stepping stone towards regional cooperation.