The dinkelberry gang want to run posters off

[KrazyHorse]

Interesting, I didn't know Canadians cared about realpolitik when dealing with Quebec but not when dealing with the US.

Are you an idiot? Do I need to spell this out step by step?

1) There is a primitive concept of "fairness" that most people have. This is not well-defined, and I don't use it to judge the morality/desirability of actions, policies etc. However, it does have an impact on what people actually DO.
2) Exacting tribute as such from a sovereign neighbor which has had friendly relations with you for 150 years would be viewed by most people as unbelievably "unfair". So much so that the victim government would almost certainly respond to its own citizens' outrage (as well as being emboldened by the outrage of most rational governments around the world) and would react irrationally to the demand (at least from the sense of pure national interest).
3) The "fairness" question is murky when it comes to peaceful separation of formerly united political units. The Canadian government could (and would) make the point that it needed to protect the rights of Canadian citizens in Montreal who (by a huge majority) wished to remain in Canada. The newly sovereign QC government would make the point that previously pieces of QC had not been allowed to separate from the ROC, therefore it would be unfair to allow pieces of it to split off. Neither point is particularly strong relative to the other (once more demonstrating the uselessness of "fairness" as a moral guide). Self-interest would rule the day and given the inability of QC to do ****-all about it, ROC would annex Montreal and surrounding regions.

None of this is particularly novel, and if you'd bothered to think about my posts you would have realized precisely what I was saying.

[giblets]

Are you an idiot? Do I need to spell this out step by step?

Believe it or not, your opinions are not infallible truths that any sensible person would agree with. You couldn't seem to decide on whether people in the real world adhere to realpolitik or not. Why should I have been able to guess what your secret criteria for deciding whether you think someone adheres to realpolitik is?

Being unable to agree on whether it's fair for Montreal to remain part of Quebec doesn't mean people say "**** it, let's annex Montreal because it's in our self-interest to do so". It would seem much more plausible, if Canadians consider fairness important, that the majority opinion in the ROC on what is fair would determine what happens.

[Ben Kenobi]

Well, seeing as KH is from montreal and I'm from the ROC, seems to be clear that the ROC would want to partition Quebec.