10. 5% of GDP during 1992-2002. This is the equivalent of $55 billion in the latter year. It also found strong evidence that the Canadian social state is converging downward to the level of the American social state. Although non-military spending in Canada was 5.7 percentage points of GDP greater than the US in 2001, that number is substantially down from 15.2 percentage points of GDP gap in 1992.
"Certainly big business has benefited from free trade, with significant gains in income, wealth and CEO pay packages," said Bruce Campbell, one of the report's authors. "However, the FTA failed to deliver the goods big business promised. And the effect on well-being of a large majority of Canadians and on the social cohesion of society, has been negative on balance."
"Despite this, the big business lobby is pushing for still deeper forms of economic integration with the US. Will the Paul Martin government resist big business pressure to go further down this path? The signs are not encouraging" concludes the report.
Straight Talk: Big Business and the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement Fifteen Years Later, is available at the CCPA's web site: http://www.policyalternatives.ca
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Dave Ruston