"Almost overnight, we would become one of the most prosperous nations in the world."
If you joined the US, you would be THE most prosperous nation in the world.
I would personally have no problem joining the US..at the same time it is one of the sticking points of us leaving Canada..a lot of people are worried about the direction we would be taking. Talk of being swallowed up and left in a worse spot than we are now..is in peoples minds.
On the other hand if California split from the US I think that would clinch a deal for us. The resulting country would be awesome. We even have a new name for it.. Cascadia.
They'd be better off as a seperate country, although they'd be welcome here. I'd much rather have a strong, conservative ally on the world stage and they would certainly be big enough and self sustaining enough to be a country on their own.
They could raise and equip their own army and it would be rather formitable too. Most Albertans hunt and are well trained in handling guns. They're basically of the same frontier stock as the American west.
They would survive without Canada, but I'm not so sure Canada would survive without them. It's about time that Canada discovered that. Perhaps they'd pay a little more attention to them.