Putting The Boots To Canadian Industry

We're next-door neighbours, without even a fence between us. We're occasional friends, sharing certain things between us; research initiatives in the area of science and astronomy among many others. And we are staunch trading partners, each of us fundamentally and functionally assisting the other to enter one another's markets, expanding those markets and with that, our economies. Albeit, unfortunately, reluctantly.

We're only human, after all, and each country seeks to protect its own producers, be it in the agricultural, resource-extraction sectors or industrial. We tend to tip-toe around these basic inconveniences, however, and manage somehow to remain in step when and how we can, dependent to a certain degree. Admittedly, Canada more so than the United States with its own assured interior market, ten times that of Canada's.

Far more Canadians travel to the United States as a tourist and leisure-time destination than the reverse. And because we are such close neighbours, often enough each country's citizens has family members living in the other country. When one of us is in need of special assistance on the border when first-responders in emergency situations occur, we respond, each of us, unstintingly, fully aware of our social-geographic interdependence.

We most certainly do have our differences - and do our utmost to settle them through trade dispute resolutions. We also have other differences - political, social, and we cherish those differences, although we do make strenuous efforts, when it's deemed um, political, to bridge those gaps. How could it be otherwise, when we share the world's "longest undefended border"? Our political imperatives and social mores often bring us to the brink of sharp words. We're mature enough to seek common ground and resume good relations.

But darned if Canadians don't get sick and tired of being shafted time and again by U.S. trade protectionism, free trade agreement in place, or not. For the fact is, as much as the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement binds us, the larger, stronger, more assertive of the two partners is always able to pull rank. And, the fact is, what the U.S. Congress says, goes; agreements are secondary set-asides.

Canadians are, it would appear, naturally given to a more social-oriented political statement, constitutionally and Constitutionally. Whereas the United States is geared more to a right-slanting political arena. Still, it's the Republican party oddly enough that clings to the notion of freeing up trade between countries, while their political protagonists tend to remain suspicious and more protectionist.

If we think we have problems now dealing with a Republican-led administration in settling free trade disputes, such as those which always seem to centre around lumber, we can look forward to a far more troubling scenario should the Democrats step into the White House. Which is kind of ironic, given that Canadians see more in common with the Democratic platform than they ever could with a Republican one. But that's how it is.

Politics make strange bedfellows and trade and economic enhancements make even more peculiar alliances. A bill currently before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works committee, in a U.S.-belated genuflection toward Global Warming directly targets Canada's interests as a free-trade partner with her neighbour. Sponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman and John Warner it spells trouble for our future trade relationship.

The Climate Security Act of the U.S. gives token acknowledgement to climate change, while seeking to ensure energy security within the country, utilizing protectionist-inspired steps to achieve a certain goal. That goal may very well result in a carbon tax levied on U.S. companies for the privilege of continuing to import Canadian energy and manufactured goods. Needless to say that additional cost would ultimately be levied against Canadian producers.

This bill has more than ample support from self-interested parties like competing manufacturers in the United States, more than happy to keep out those inconvenient Canada-made items. And, of course, trade unions also whose jobs, after all, are geared toward the protection of their members' jobs. Jobs that have been melting away at an alarming rate in the last decade and more.

All's fair in conservation and trade, after all. In all these matters of imposition of trade restrictions, duties and any other impediments to free trade, the U.S. Commerce Department has the last word. And they, evidently, have already rendered their point of view, that most Canadian exports which would include oil, natural gas, automobiles and parts, iron, steel, pulp and paper remain more greenhouse gas-intensive than those produced in the U.S.

Seems they've forgotten somehow that resource exploitation in Canada because of the dire need to keep supplying U.S. consumers with the expansive energy they're accustomed to, is already costing Canada and Canadians in increased carbon dioxide emissions. And, the thing of it is, oil and gas resources which Canada has in abundance are precious resources that much of the rest of the world is anxious to acquire. If not to the U.S. then elsewhere: think China, India.

They'd do well also to recall another inconvenient little factoid: that Canada sells the U.S. 11% of their oil, and 16% of their natural gas needs. Fill that critical gap how, exactly...?

What American investors would really like to encourage is the traditional trading relationship between Canada and the U.S. where Canada would hand over its resources in their raw state to the United States where processing activities could be happily and profitably undertaken. Understandably, Canada is no longer willing to be seen as resource extractors to the U.S. high profit and quality production line.

Hewers of wood and carriers of water then, not now.