A New Constitutional Convention? No.

 The Constitution has a provison for holding a new constitutional convention whose powers would be essentially unlimited (just as the original convention far exceeded its authority).  A number of states over the years have called for such a convention, and there's been recent discussion of it.

Lyman Stone doesn't connect the two, but his twitter thread on the faults of the 1982 Canadian constitution provide me evidence to argue against a broadbrush revision:

Canada's 1982 constitution is a lulzy document which was passed with little serious consideration and a large number of wild drafting decisions with massive unanticipated consequences.

— Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 (@lymanstoneky) November 3, 2022

Slavery in Canada and "Turn"

We've been watching "Turn" on Netflix, which is a 4 season series dealing mainly with Washington's spies, but which touches on, or forces connections to, episodes in the Revolution which are more commonly known. (I think it makes very generous use of "dramatic license".)

Anyhow, in the episode ending season 2, the African-American who was freed by Capt. Simcoe and enlisted in his Queen's Rangers takes the son of the enslaved maid to Major Andre from Setauket into York City to rejoin his mother. (The maid's been doing a little spying for the rebels on the side.) Needless to say, the British soldier loves the maid and urges her to flee with him to Canada so they can both be free.

I wondered about the accuracy of that so I did a little researching on the internet.

Sure enough, slavery in Canada lasted until 1834, when it was abolished throughout the empire.

But wait, it's not that simple.  "Lower Canada" was originally Quebec, founded by the French until the Brits won it by conquest in the French and Indian War. "Upper Canada" became today's Ontario and was mostly settled by the English.

Reading between the lines it seems likely the Brits just kept the old French laws, including those pertaining to slavery at the start.  And in "Lower Canada" they might have kept the laws until 1834. But by 1790's slavery in Upper Canada was being questioned, and a courageous troublemaker  named Chloe Cooley resisted being sold as a slave into New York.  That resulted in an act restricting the importation of slaves and promising freedom to children born after 1793. But the act only applied to Upper Canada.

Based on skimming the second article I linked to, slaves in the thirteen colonies should not have seen Canada as the promised land of freedom before 1793.

And Canada's Dairy Farmers Are Compensated

Prime Minister Trudeau and President Trump are similar in one way: when their wheeling and dealing on trade issues hurts farmers, they compensate them.  See this article on the Canadian program.

Canada and Supply Management for Dairy

One of the biggest issues in the renegotiation of NAFTA with Canada is their desire to maintain their system of supply management for dairy.  Here's a site with statistical data on the industry.  The two big provinces are Ontario and Quebec.  As one can see from this chart there's little variation in cow numbers over the last 15 years (2004-2018).  But if you look at the number of farms, there has been roughly 1/3 reduction in farm numbers over the same period (17,000 to 11,000).

From ERS  (the copy and paste process loses the formating.  I've bolded the two big points): Midpoints increased for each commodity over 1987-2012, but the rate of increase varies widely, with dramatic long-term changes in egg, hog, and dairy production (table 9). The midpoint flock size in egg layers increased to 925,975 birds in 2012 from 117,839 in 1987 (and just over 62,000 in 1982); the midpoint for hog removals rose to 40,000 in 2012 from 1,200 in 1987; and the midpoint dairy cow herd rose to 900 cows in 2012 from 80 in 1987. The broiler and fed cattle industries show continued consolidation, with 2012 midpoints a bit more than double their values in 1987. However, each underwent striking changes in organization and technology well before the series starts in 1987 (MacDonald and McBride, 2009). Table 9 Consolidation in livestock sectors, 1987-2012 Commodity 1987 1997 2007 2012 Change (percent) 1987-2012 2007-2012 Sales midpoint: Number of head sold or removed Broilers 300,000 480,000 681,600 680,000 127 -0.1 Fed cattle 17,532 38,000 35,000 38,369 119 10 Hogs and pigs 1,200 11,000 30,000 40,000 3,233 33 Turkeys 120,000 137,246 157,000 160,000 33 2 Inventory midpoint: Number of head in herd/flock Beef cows 89 100 110 110 24 0 Egg layers 117,839 300,000 872,500 925,975 686 6 Milk cows 80 140 570 900 1,025 58 Source: USDA, Economic Research Service, compiled from census of agriculture data.

Bottom line: while Canadian dairy farms have declined in number, the rate of decline in the US is higher. 

I'm reminded of the supply management system the US used to have for tobacco, now ended.  It had a similar effect: slowing the transformation of the industry.

Wendell Berry Meet Westby Cooperative Creamery

Washington Monthly had a piece on the Westby:

Westby is the exception, not the rule. It’s a holdout from an earlier era when co-ops helped farmers and rural communities keep a much larger share of the nation’s wealth than they do today. Most everywhere else across rural America, the powerful cooperative movement has either faded or, worse, become co-opted by giant monopolies that prey off the very small-scale producers they’re supposed to protect. In that way, they reflect a broader change in the economy. While pretending to represent farmers’ interests, these co-ops in fact dictate prices to farmers just as Amazon dictates prices to book publishers and Walmart to its suppliers. Cooperative Creamery in WI

Wendell Berry writes for the Henry County Local on the recent spate of creameries and distribution channels dropping dairy farmers and includes this:

The person interviewed in these several articles who makes clear and admirable sense is Gary Rock, a dairyman, one of Dean’s terminated, in LaRue County: “He would like to see a base program across the nation that sets production quotas in line with market demands.” He thus sees through the problem to its solution. He is advocating the only solution to the problem of overproduction. Kentuckians don’t have to look far for an example of the necessary solution, for we had it in the Burley Tobacco Growers Co-operative Association. That organization effectively controlled production, maintained fair prices, and gave the same protections to small producers as to large ones. The history of the Burley Association disproves, as its membership conscientiously rejected, the “inevitability” of the destruction of family farms by agribusiness corporations.

Of course Berry is wrong.  Production wasn't controlled by the co-op, but by your faithful USDA/ASCS bureaucracy (operating in conjunction with the co-op).  "Supply management", one term for the sort of program involved, is something Canada still uses for dairy and eggs and maple syrup. We dropped the tobacco and peanut supply management programs after I left, not that there's any relationship. :-)

Laboratories of Democracy: the Case of the US

Justice Brandeis praised states as "laboratories of democracy", considering federalism is a way for states to experiment with different programs and arrangements before we try them on the national level.  Think of how "Romneycare" in Massachusetts served as a test for Obamacare.  Liberals are reconsidering their belief in federalism as they oppose the Trump administration--it's great for California to lead the way on climate change.

I hadn't considered until I read this post at Jstor how the U.S. itself served as a laboratory for democracy, an example for Canada of what not to do as they constructed their government in 1867. Notably, they wanted to avoid the features of federalism which had cost their neighbor to the south over 600,000 dead.  They distrusted the 10th Amendment and the strong president (the dictator Lincoln).

Is Canada Tightening Border Security With US?

Apparently the answer is "yes".

North America's Farms: Why Mexicans Emigrate

Canada, Mexico, and the US are trying to provide agricultural statistics across the 3 countries.  Here's a map showing the distribution of farms, with each blue dot equaling 200 farms. Because it's static, not interactive, the map isn't great, but it's still interesting.  Canada has an interesting distribution: no farms above the western Great Lakes, but many east of the Rockies and a surprising concentration north of NH and VT. Mexico has about twice as many farms as the US, so the southern part of the country is solid blue.

I'd also note the Amish concentration in Lancaster county, PA. The concentration of smaller farms shows up as an almost blue dot. 

Canada and the U.S. Differences

I skim the blog at ourfuture.org, but usually find its posts much too long and lacking focus, as well as being too liberal for my tastes.  But Sara Robinson recently returned to the U.S. from 7 years living in Canada and has a nice post about the differences she's found, particularly the synergy between the foodies (left) and farmers (right) in the Pacific Northwest.

Tobacco Growing in Canada

Via Freakonomics, an article, part of a series, on tobacco growing in Canada.  It seems there's an underground trade in tobacco, grown in Canada and sold to contraband manufacturers, who sell the cigarettes tax-free on First Nation (i.e., "native Americans") land.


"We" (i.e., I) usually think of tobacco as a Southern crop, grown in the Carolinas and Kentucky.  Not so, Wisconsin and Connecticut have been/still are growers of certain varieties and it turns out Ontario also grows tobacco.  And, like the U.S. but a little slower, Canada had a buyout of tobacco growers who had tobacco quotas. Three paragraphs:

"The federal government offered a controversial buyout of Ontario tobacco growers in 2009. Though most took the payments — designed to usher them out of the business — more than 200 have returned to producing tobacco through a loophole that allows them to rent their land and hire themselves out to licence holders, often their non-farming children.

The new system replaces one where farmers held tobacco quotas worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each and the Flucured Tobacco Marketing Board kept close tabs on production. With the previous regime, farmers would lose that valuable quota if caught selling tobacco on the black market, a powerful deterrent, noted Mr. Stewart. Having the new licence cancelled carries no such financial consequences.

And

"These guys [the farmers who earn big cash money] are pretty crafty," the farmer said. "You think when you talk to them they're honest and they're salt of the earth and they're good people. Not at all."

Go North, Young Man, Go North

That's not Horace Greeley reincarnated, it's Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek, making a good case for why Canada is a society that works better than the U.S. (One example, its banking system is rated #1 in the world, ours is 44.)