Canada and the USA have too many similarities. If they merge, the new country would be the largest in the world, in terms of power, economy, and area. Why don't Canada and the USA merge?

(Question and answer posted to QorA).

We up here in Canada would be happy to accept the United States into our country. Before joining our nation however there would have to be some changes made in the US. First off, they would have to get rid of their president, congress and senate. I suggest turning the White House into a museum to failed republics and the big building with the dome would make a great Walmart store. They would not be needed any more since Ottawa would be the capital. Of course, their whole electoral process would have to go including that nonsense of the electoral college. They would need to swear allegiance to our Queen and replace all their stars and stripes with the Canadian Flag.

Turning to elections, this nonsense of electing everyone, including the dog catcher needs to go. In Canada, civil service positions that require some degree of skill to do the job correctly are generally appointed or left to the bureaucrats. We try to reserve only those positions which require little or no skill to perform to elected politicians. Gerrymandering would be out. Our method of determining political electoral boundaries discourages politicians from stacking the deck in their favour. Also, Canada would not permit the nonsense seen in some States concerning voter restrictions. Our government keeps accurate lists of voters, makes it easy to get on the list and vote, so that if you were born in Canada, or became a citizen, you get to vote. We don't need any of that jumping through hoops to get registered only to be turned down at the polls because some minor bureaucrat forgot to dot an "I". The parliamentary system of elections would replace the republican two year chaotic carnival of primaries and elections that is so entertaining but so inefficient, and a waste of time and money.

I'm not sure how Canada would handle the Dems and the GOP. Our Liberals would probably take the centre Dems under their wing, with the NDP absorbing the progressives, but I'm not sure that even our conservatives would be interested in the current iteration of the Republican party.

The NRA would need to disband as we, in general, discourage extremist groups. All the states would have to accept our gun control laws.

Right wing extremists are generally frowned upon up here in the North, although we do recognize and have universal health care for mental illness. Calling Nazis fine people is definitely frowned on and considered to be in extremely bad taste up here.

Hopefully we would find a way to recycle all that USS paper currency into shopping bags or Amazon boxes as the loonie, toonie and other Canadian currency would replace those boring old greenbacks, US coins would be melted down and recast into loonies, or in the case of US pennies the copper could be sold to electric wire manufacturers.

States would be allowed to keep their state police, although they would, of course, now be called provincial police since the states would become provinces. Of course, English and French would be the official languages, although we would consider adopting Spanish as a third official language. The FBI would become a department of the RCMP and the CIA would become part of CSIS.

Getting the insurance companies out of basic health care would be a priority so that universal health care would be easier to implement.

July the 4th would be abandoned, replaced by Canada day, July 1st. We are not interested in pledging allegiance to a flag. The US could keep the star-spangled banner since it is a cute little ditty, albeit difficult to sing.

Americans would also have to learn how to spell properly such words as centre and travelling, and how to properly pronounce the name of the final letter of the alphabet. We would probably make an exception for the word "center" used in computer languages since it would be a pain in the butt to change all that code. Oh, and the Canadian sentence-ending pseudo-period "eh" would have to replace the "um," "huh" and "you know" so popular in verbal discourse south of the border. Most US citizens would also need to learn to say "sorry," even when they are not.

Americans would also need to brush up on the metric system as miles, pounds and so on would become obsolete.

There are lots of other changes the Americans south of the border would have to make in order to qualify to become part of the Americans north of the border, but in the interests of posting length I will leave them to be enumerated after the US petitions to join us.