AdamDecember 30, 2007 00:33 EST

"So, if the four Maritime provinces were to unite as one political entity, for instance, the new governance structure would represent approximately 2.3 million people."

Some very simple fact checking would have informed Walrus that there are not "four Maritime Provinces," there are four "Atlantic Provinces" which are the three Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland, and they are not quite as easily united as you seem to imagine.


" Quebec, without Montreal’s 3.6 million inhabitants, would now be a province of four million."

Now, returning to real world politics, how would cutting North America's last Francophone region in half, and making making one part a bilingual metropolis, play in Quebec? What is the purpose of this silly thought-game? None of the carve-ups described are even remotely possible.

"While ostensibly radical, "

Not so much radical as nonsense - science-fiction really.

"this redesign of Canada’s map would actually resolve the anachronism that is our political structure and better prepare our economy for the challenges of the twenty-first century."

Nobody knows what the challenges of the twenty-first century will be, but some guess they might have something to do with massive environmental destruction, with which megacities might be poorly designed to cope.

Also, this claim that cities are wealth creators only works if we assume, for instance, that the excessively compensated executive in Calgary sitting in his desk contributes more than the labourer in Grande Prairie who brings the oil from the ground, and that both contribute more than the Dene fisherman in Fort Chip whose entire way of life is destroyed by Oil Sands development. Of course, the Dene fisherman may receive very little compensation for several thousand years of fishing rights, but without the destruction of these rights, our idiot in Calgary wouldn't receive a cent, despite his "creative" potential.

A more radical suggestion might be to tax the Jesus out of the idiot in Calgary (even if he hides out in Turner Valley), increase the wages of the worker in GP through unionization, and properly compensate the fisherman in Fort Chip. That might also reduce the number of people who have little choice other than to relocate into the cities.

In the current political climate, that is probably almost as much science fiction as the strange carve-ups suggested by the authors.