Canada

Membership of the European Economic Area - same as Norway - for example.

Comes with being part of the EU Internal Market, Freedom Of Movement (both ways, of course) and exceptions in a couple of areas (such as fishing rights not being decided by the EU, which I suspect is something that Canada would rather have) but without voting power within the EU.

~~European~~ Worldwide Union

Saint Pierre and Miquelon, right by Newfoundland. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Pierre_and_Miquelon

That's the soccer team.

FWIW I obviously don’t have the power to approve that but I would certainly vote to make that a thing!

EU members are all sovereign, brexiter.

It's not about being a "gotcha" - it's about demonstrating a pathway to better democratic representation.

You're right that EU membership would only require PR for European Parliament representatives initially. However, this would create several significant opportunities:

1. Practical demonstration: Canadians would experience firsthand how an electoral system that ensures every vote counts actually works, rather than just hearing theoretical arguments.

2. Institutional precedent: Once PR is successfully implemented for one electoral body, the argument that it's "too complex" or "un-Canadian" becomes much harder to maintain.

3. Democratic legitimacy gap: Having representatives to the EU Parliament elected through PR while our own MPs are chosen through FPTP would create an obvious legitimacy contrast that would be difficult to justify.

The Liberal leadership vote using preferential voting actually supports this point. Internal party processes already recognize the limitations of FPTP - they just don't extend those same democratic principles to the general electorate. In fact, all parties, even the Conservatives, use superior electoral systems to FPTP.

The reality is that 76% of Canadians support electoral reform according to recent polling, but our major parties benefit from maintaining a system that systematically discards votes. Exposure to functioning PR would make the democratic deficit in our current system increasingly apparent.

A lot of people don’t get it until they see it in action.

My union recently had a vote about increasing health benefits. “No” won in one of the categories because there were 3 options for how much to increase it by. (Yes won by 76% while the no beat the top yes 24% to 23%)

I pointed this out at the next meeting and we had a vote and struck the no vote. Later a bunch of people said thanks for pointing that out, and my reply was “no sweat, we have the same problem with our elections.”

Then everyone applauded and Einstein gave me a piece of π. Just kidding, it was more like weird looks and a couple agreements, but I like to think I brought the issue to a few people’s attention.