[CANADA] What is the difference between provinces and territories, and what would make a territory eligible to become a province?

I live in the Yukon Territory.

Basically, provinces are sovereign, in that they have a Lt. Governor, as a direct representative of HM the Queen, and appointed officially by her. Essentially, the Queen of Canada is also the Queen of each province. The Territories do not have this. They have Commissioners, appointed by the Federal Government.

The reasons for this have much to do with the large sizes, and low populations of the Territories. They need Federal support to exist. E.g., the Yukon, which has a Premier, and government much like any province only has a population of around 35,000, 26,000 of which live in one city. The total population isn't much more than a large town, or small city elsewhere, but, the territory is big. The other territories are bigger, and have even fewer people.

The provinces were formed when Canada became a country. Back when Canada was first born in 1867, we had just the provinces, of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. These were three distinct colonies that had their own governing bodies, and a high population. Not long afterward, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Prince Edward Island joined as provinces too. Eventually, it became ten provinces and three territories that we have today.

Provinces are similar to states, except that provinces are mainly administrative unit. Canada's provinces don't really control anything, other than perhaps the local education and health requirements of the citizens in that province. There are provincial taxes, much like state taxes, which help pay for things like the government, infrastructure, and in the case of Quebec, cultural issues related to the French language.

The main reason that I see Canada has some territories and not just all provinces is because of the population of the three territories that we have. In 2016, the combined population of the Yukon, Nunavut, and Northwest Territories were less than the smallest province in Canada, Prince Edward Island. It does not warrant having an entire level of government in three territories, each responsible for 40,000 people or less. So instead, the federal government gets elected officials to manage the area, and they get one seat (one voting representative) in our parliamentary government.

Our territories are sort of the way the Brazilian territory of Fernando de Noronha was treated. It was a territory, and then the federal government chose to dissolve that territory and have it administered by the state of Pernambuco.