How Canadian battleships could have complicated Washington

Almirante Latorre, which served Britain as HMS Canada, opens a revealing treaty counterfactual. If Canada had bought several battleships and organised a battle squadron, excluding those ships from the post-war settlement would have been politically difficult. Canada might then have ranked alongside France and Italy in capital-ship negotiations and entered the next war with a much larger starting fleet. The same logic would make it harder to insist that Australia abandon its own battlecruiser, so Dominion procurement could have altered the balance behind the Washington limits.