The next five states in the Union?

Austin Bay has an interesting column up on whether Canada is the next failed state.

Crazy? Not really. As the AdScam scandal metastisizes (thanks in large part to Captain Ed), Paul Martin's Liberal Party is doomed. Think of what happened to the Republicans in the November 1974 elections, and imagine it as the signal to George Wallace to lead the South out of the Union (again). The analogy here is apt as to what the Liberal crack-up is going to do for the Parti Quebecois, the crazy nutters who want to overturn the injustice of the French & Indian War by becoming their own separate nation, seceding from Canada.

What happens to the pieces? This is where Bay does some interesting speculation:

Here's a thumbnail sketch of that analysis: Say Quebec does become a separate European-style nation-state -- a "people" with cultural, linguistic, religious and historical identity (never mind the objections of Mohawk and Cree Indians living in Quebec). Quebec has the people and resources to make a go of it, though the economic price for its egotism will be stiff. British Columbia also has "nation-state" assets: Access to the sea, strong industrial base, raw materials and an educated population.

Oil-producing Alberta might join the United States and instantly find common political ground with Alaska, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. Canada's struggling Atlantic provinces might find statehood economically attractive and extend the New England coastline. A rump Canada consisting of "Greater Ontario" -- with remaining provinces as appendages -- might keep the maple-leaf flag aloft. As for poor, isolated Newfoundland: Would Great Britain like to reacquire a North American colony?

British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Yukon, and Manitoba as American states? What would be the legal precedent for such a thing?

There actually is: it was the Eleventh Article of Confederation, approved back in 1781, and calls for the automatic admission of Canada into the United States.

ARTICLE XI Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the united states, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this union: but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine states.

Stranger things have been known to happen.

UPDATE: More secession talk, this time in northern New England.