“I’m a little bit dismayed that this unrealistic debate about EU membership kind of distracts from the things that could really be done to intensify the relationship,” said Hurrelmann. “How could we try to speed up processes of regulatory alignment under CETA? How could we encourage European investment in Canada in areas such as critical raw materials?… Those, I think, are the kinds of debates for which there’s really a lot of potential. And the Canada-EU economic relationship can definitely become closer and can be intensified, and that would be beneficial for both sides, but not through Canada’s membership in the EU.”

Hmm. I’m not actually sure that’s a problem. Even if we say we want to, the first steps are doing things like aligning regulations and setting up free movement, as this article goes into.

But yeah, even if we make EU Canada work it’s a long way off.