Hi I need help with my Cyberpunk setting, one that includes 21th century tech like Blackberries. I need to create a Dystopia world were Canada became very strongest power in North America and the Can Dollar became the cash of choice,


Vancover and Victoria are the Sprawl of my setting what Seattle is to Shadowrun, there are Neo Natives in this setting from the Underground RPG setting that I've borrowed for this setting, I need help figuring out how North America looks and Canada ended up as the power of most of the world.


LW

Magic or disaster.

That is, Canada does not have a particularly large population -- less that California, France, South Africa and Columbia, to name just a few. Economy tends to scale at least somewhat with population, but Canada being as spread out as it is, it usually lags a bit on this front. Plus Canada is heavily a trading nation, so it is hard for it to do too much better than its trading partners. So in no normal world does Canada become the strongest country.

So, magic: some amazing new discovery is dependent on some obscure element that it ends up can be mined fairly easily somewhere in Canada, but nowhere else easily. Say they find a supply of helium 3 under the permafrost near Hudson Bay, enabling practical, low cost, fusion power. Canada become OPEC all wrapped up in one country. Would destroy the manufacturing economy, but the country overall gets rich off of it.

Or disaster. Something devastes places in more temperate climes, causing large amounts of death and economic disruption. Say some new deadly super-bacteria spreads through the water supply in warmer areas, causing massive amounts of death and mayhem before a treatment was found to combat it, but it doesn't reproduce as well in colder water, and it started further south and took time to spread, so Canada took almost no damage. Canada has still suffered badly, because its economy is so integrated with that of the US, but it still has functioning public institutions, while the southern US and large parts of Mexico are post-apocalyptic, and the rest of them are under martial law as the authorities try to maintain control.

Good luck!

I would say it could be done with a revised timeline.

In your timeline, Canada remained on much better relations with their own tribes, condemning the US Re-Education and Relocation Act and never passed their own Nepean Act in Canada. Canada would become a safe haven for those tribals seeking to escape the US camps, which created a lot of friction between the two neighboring countries, but ultimately let Canada remain largely intact through the coming troubles. A few US states would also resist the federal mandate, with California, Arizona and New Mexico trying to make a stand against the injustice of the Acts.

Without the addition of Canadian forces to the equation, if even only to make the NAN forces stretch out to fight across a larger battleline, the US found it had bitten off a bit more than they could chew when the magic started hitting. And the tribes were not just taking back the west, many displaced tribes like the Cherokee were looking to the east to return to their original homelands.

So instead of the NAN taking a large amount of western territory running north into Canada and south to the edge of Mexico, you now have it reaching across the middle of the States running from coast to coast, effectively shattering the USA as the NAN take the majority of the landmass. Some states bordering with Canada would be allowed to merge with them, mostly NY, RI, MA, ME, VT, NE and would absorb a lot of the displaced Americans. In the meantime GE, FL, LA, AL, MS would join with Caribbean islands to form the Creole Caribbean League.
Texas, Florida and Alaska would splinter off on their own just because we like those three places being independent and general thorn in everyone's side.

So now you have an intact Canada, even picking up a few of the NE US states as well as a good chunk of former US population that have been displaced, a large strip of NAN lands that is broken up into their tribal regions, a conglomerate of islands and southern coast states, and three independent states doing their own thing and being more frontier style areas.

What you want to do with Quebec is your own headache....

Nobody wants Quebec... Hell, I don't even think Quebec wants Quebec.

J/K... Or am I..

Naa.. So I'd say let Quebec take the lands of Newfoundland/Labrador but there southern border is now the Saint Lawrence River with the exception of Quebec City covering both sides of the river. There they've become a bit of a pain in the posterior by charging a tax on all shipping entering/exiting the Saint Lawrence (high Tax but just low enough that it's still cheaper to ship through the saint Lawrence then through other means). Ontario pushes their Easter border so Montreal is now part of Ontario (the new border say follows the 155).

Now all that would be needed is for Quebec to have something for them to be a minor power player so people don't want to piss them off to much (where as right now I don't think there are many who would care if they did).

You mean other than that a chunk of the easter seaboard would probably go dark without the hydro-electric power they ship south?

South shore of the St. Lawrence would not realistically end up split off, that is a pretty big chunk of the Quebec population. The Montreal thing though, wouldn't be impossible, Montreal is different from the rest of the province in a lot of ways.

This isn't a Shadowrun Setting, it's a new original setting, a Cyberpunk setting just not Shadowrun.



I still need help with it,


LW

Folks I still need help with my original Cyberpunk setting,




LW

*dusts off a chair and sits down*

Okay, so you want a Canadian Cyberpunk Setting, eh?

Now you have specified that you want Canada to be a major power.

So let's take a moment to have you expand on what you are envisioning.

Is your Canada still the same territory it is now in RL or has it done a land grab on the US taking some of their lands?

In a number of apocalyptic films, most of the USA is eradicated and survivors seek sanctuary in Canada. Throw in some climate change and the True North Strong and Free might work. Though why other polities like Europe or China wouldn't take over, I don't know.

Almost exactly seven years. Raise the Dead??

Global warming starts a chain reaction of methane release from arctic territories. This is actually starting. A Russian scientist studying methane release in the Russian arctic has found vents of methane bubbling out from under the near-coast ocean as much as a kilometre across.

Concerted expense and research on the part of Canada results in a pair of techniques that cheaply splits methane (CH₄) into a huge source of hydrogen fuel and carbon fibre. They manage to keep the technology secret. (Big assumption, but what the hell.)

Canada gets insanely rich. All else follows.

Materials sold for only Canadian dollars, leading to the 'hydro-dollar' equivalent of the petro-dollar today.

High tech equipment including weaponry is bought to make Canadian Forces small but effective enough to protect what they control. Tech-on-a-ship exports the methodology to counteract the venting all around the arctic. World is grateful. Diplomatic clout increases.

Canada so rich, people immigrate from elsewhere. (Health-care, guaranteed income, first-nations treaties finally respected, etc.) Population rises and wealth/production/military force feedback occurs.

#######

No idea what would keep the U.S.A. from invading before this happens. No empire has ever given up world domination without a fight. See Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" for example of what happened to the burgeoning economy of Japan in the 80s. (which growth was extrapolated in SR*)

Something along the lines of discussions above, I guess.