[DiracSpike]

This is based mostly just on the sentimentality and antiquity of all four of these countries being somewhat similar in values language and governance structure. The clear problem, and why you really can't claim this becomes a "bloc" like the Euro zone or United States, is the vast vast distance. Australia is basically as far away as you can get from Canada, and New Zealand is literally as far as you can get from the UK, directly on the opposite side of the earth. They're not exactly lucrative markets either, New Zealand has about the same population as BC, to sell our goods to either of those countries you have to sail past Indonesia (255 M), Japan (126 M), Philippines (102 M), Vietnam (92 M), and China, to access markets of 25M and 5M. Why? The Australians have even realized this is a problem, recently they've started debating why they put more of an emphasis on trade with New Zealand due to familiarity than the 255 million people just to the north of them in Indonesia.

I don't know, this seems really unnecessary. Canada needs to lessen its pathetic dependence on the US, to be sure, but you do that by expanding infrastructure and ports to take advantage of the close-ish sea routes we have to Asia. We benefitted for decades by having close trade ties by pure luck to the world's dominant economy, now it's time to embrace the future which is Asia, and not even just China. If we would just get out of our own way we have a decently diversified economy, besides banking and finance out of London there's nothing that these other countries bring to the table that we don't already have to a higher degree. Except maybe sheep.