[version_five]

> Do you want to break up the country so all the money and people are in one part, and you and a bunch of dirt roads are in the remaining part?

Yes

[grecy]

> a bunch of dirt roads are in the remaining part

If you've never been, do yourself a favor. The parts out west with the dirt roads are the best parts.

Here's a little road trip I took late last fall on "the dirt roads" - https://youtu.be/pyQMt8om9Io?t=973

[version_five]

I grew up on a dirt road in rural Canada. I'd be happy to live in such an area and have a government that takes the local population's needs into account. The GP's dismissive attitude of "you and a bunch of dirt roads" is exactly what the rural population is up against.

[yongjik]

A country made of "dirt roads in rural Canada" will stop looking like "dirt roads in rural Canada" in short order - no industry, few jobs, and every teenager with high school diploma will try to escape to an industrial nation next door.

You're taking being part of Canada as granted and then complaining that Canada is ruled by the wishes of the majority of Canadians.

[qball]

>no industry, few jobs, and every teenager with high school diploma will try to escape to an industrial nation next door.

This already happens to Canada generally (it's a college degree, but that's just the new high school diploma these days). 1 in 47 Canadians (800,000 of 37.5M total, working population 24.5M) is an expat living in the US, because their quality of life (not just in pay; less interference from nosy neighbors has a positive nonzero monetary value associated with it) is substantially increased by doing that.

It's also worth noting that the provinces that comprise that part of the country are also net contributors to the economy; Ontario and Quebec, for all their population, are still net receivers of equalization payments in a way the supposedly massive tax base from Toronto and Montreal doesn't offset.

Of course, it's not like those places have any incentive to improve, because their entire existence is based around looting the better provinces. This deal is getting worse all the time, but since it's also apparently a Canadian trait to just sit there and take it...

[splitstud]

The dirt roads their food travels on no less. Urbanites are truly shortsighted in their beliefs that the rest of the world depends on them, when the opposite is true. As if history does not show that cities come from successful settled areas rather than the opposite.