> Canada's status as a different country has always made relations between Canada and the U.S. substantially different than between Scotland and the U.K That i

> Canada's status as a different country has always made relations between Canada and the U.S. substantially different than between Scotland and the U.K That is literally the point of Krugman's article, not a reason to dismiss it. To spell it out for you, the comparison is that an independent Scotland would have a relationship to the UK analagous to that between Canada and the US, a small northern country bordering an economically dominant southern one that is its major trading partner, and with which it has close cultural ties. The Quebec tangent you go off on makes no sense, since the situation there is colored by a long history of struggle along religious and lingustic lines that has no parallel in the Scotland/England relationship.