Borders Matter

Daniel Drache is an excellent author. I'd recommend anything by him.

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"George Bush has declared the war on terrorism to be the cause of his generation. The cause of Canadian sovereignty will be ours." - John Godfrey, MP for Don Va

The "Border Crossings" excerpt by Drache implies NAFTA is at fault for negative GDP growth and wage declines. Drache's conclusion that Mexico would have been better off without NAFTA is arrived at without any consideration of outside factors. The Peso crisis was surely more responsible for negative real GDP growth and wage declines than was the opening of Mexico's border to the largest market in the world, the US. Furthermore, in the absence of NAFTA the US would have been less willing to bail out the Mexican government during this crisis, because economic integration would not have been as great, which would have left a gap in the economic interest of the two countries. Other influences impacting the Mexican economy are the same as those impactin the US economy, such as competition from export economies like China and India. For the most rigorous analysis of NAFTA's impacts, see the US International Trade Commission.

Drache's assertions reinforce the misguided economic nationalism that threatens Canada's standing in the world. The North American marketplace is one in the US and Canada have a shared economic fate. Integration is inevitable and desireable, and debate should be focused on how to maximize the benefits of this phenomenon to all parties.

Thats if you are OK with US imperialism and the continentalist thesis subscribed to by its supporters among the elite in Canada. There is nothing "inevitable" or "desireable" about Canada's integration into the US empire economically or otherwise. There are interests to be served and profits to be made at the expence of popular sovereignty and democracy.

Nothing in NAFTA or this integrated North American economy is constructed to benefit the majority of Canadians (or Americans and Mexicans for that matter), that is those who work for a living. Do they have the power to sue governments for projected lost profits, or wages as corporations do under Chapter 11? Perhaps, even more telling are the side agreements on labour and the environment which have none of the enforcement provisions of the investor protection clauses.

Drache has written some good stuff in the past, from a social democratic position. Perhaps, though, instead of concentrating on the problems of GDP growth and wages as products of NAFTA (which I am sure is PART of the problem), a more critical assessment of capitalism, more particularly, neo-liberlism, was in order. Not-so-free-trade or not, capitalism threatens workers and democratic society more than it offers and serves as a prop and motivation to imperialists. A strategy to reject capitalism within the framework of a transformed, sovereign, popular democratic Canadian state, may provide the cure, and immunization, for this disease.