Ottawa — Trade Minister David Emerson suggested the United States has a sweet deal over access to Canada's oil under the North American Free Trade Agreement, saying the two Democratic presidential candidates calling for renegotiations may not know just how good the U.S. has it under the deal.
Mr. Emerson said Wednesday that reopening the three-country trade deal would not be a one way street and that Canada also has its list of concessions it would seek if the continental pact was renegotiated.
“There's no doubt if NAFTA were to be reopened we would want to have our list of priorities,” Mr. Emerson said.
“Knowledgeable observers would have to take note of the fact that we are the largest supplier of energy to the U.S. and NAFTA has been the foundation for integrating the North American energy market. When people get below the rhetoric and pick away at the details, they are going to find it's not such a slam dunk proposition.”
...
Mr. Emerson did not say Canada would insist on putting access to Canadian oil back on the table, but that provision in the deal has been a major concern to Canadian critics who argue that Canada would not be able to claim preferential treatment in a crisis.
Under the trade agreement, Canada is prohibited from cutting off oil exports to the United States if there is a worldwide shortage or supply disruption unless supplies are also rationed to Canadian consumers by the same amount.
Earlier Wednesday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama may be misinformed about NAFTA.
“NAFTA is of tremendous benefit to Americans, and perhaps the nominees have not had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the benefit to Americans and the American economy of NAFTA, because there's a tendency to say ‘it favours Mexico, or it favours Canada,' rather than to recognize the mutual benefits that come out of free trade,” he said after a speech in Toronto.
...
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080227.wemerson0227/BNStory/energy
Stumble It!
Fingers crossed.
I also find it interesting that the Conservatives think they can threaten the Democrats with oil. Those same Conservatives were screaming that we not threaten the US with anything when George Bush was still relevant.
This is not US policy!
This is ill-considered campaign rhetoric by a pair of desperate seekers for the democratic presidential NOMINATION. These people are not incumbants but are merely candidates.
Besides the rhetoric is not directed so much at Canadian trade as to Mexican trade which is the real concern of the Ohio constituency.
As far as arctic sovereignty---the arctic has returned to it's normal frozen state where the only access is by Nuke submarines and aircraft.
Is the rhetoric ill-considered? Well, there's a lot of evidence that NAFTA has hurt working people in all three countries and the main beneficiaries have been multi-national corporations. It has hurt high-paying manufacturing jobs and made effective environmental regulation difficult.
Now that the US and Canada have signed a "troops across the border" accord, threatening to cut off the #1 supplier of oil to Yankees would constitute a threat to their national security.
What kind of idiot is Emmerson, anyway? Or is he just a "talking head", saying whatever it takes to keep us quiescent?
Let’s not forget about attacking Canada for political gain during an American election which should be pointed out that the present U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins and his predecessor U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci threaten Canadian Political Parties that there would be repercussions if they did it here in Canada during our past elections.
Also I must mention the times when U.S. Police cross Canadian borders when chasing suspects and the FBI crossing into Canada to integrate people in Canada without Canadian authorization or authority and sometimes with out Canadian knowledge. Just think about the recent Military Agreement the Harper Government just signed with the Bush Administration and then remember the assistance we sent when the levies broke a couple of years ago down south and why our people were not allowed to fully help.
Now we have the Democrats attacking NAFTA and by doing so attacking Canada over the jobs that it has cost the United States of America. Strange though that no one points out that the first five years of the NAFTA treaty it cost Canada approximately six million jobs which if compared to the population of Canada at the time was close to 12% of the population losing their jobs not to mention the disappearance of un-told businesses in Canada. Imagine that happening in the U.S.? Do you think the President would be in office after that? President Clinton who refused to fine tune the NAFTA agreement making it more level before he signed it?
NAFT that treaty that provides a fair and level trading field!
US investors and corporations operating in Canada shall be treated as if they are Canadian. They must be given "national treatment". No government may favour Canadian enterprise for any reason.
The US has access to all forms of Canadian energy. If there is a shortage of oil or if for any other reason - Canada wants to cut back on its export amount to the US, it can't. It must deliver the amount it has been delivering to the US averaged over the last three years, or the same proportion of restricted output.
The US has the right to any good which means energy resources or anything else - at the same price as Canadians get it. If Canada, as it has done in the past, wishes to supply any form of energy to Canadian enterprise more cheaply than it sells to the US - in order to help develop Canadian industrial capacity - it may not do so. If it wishes, as it has done in the past, to place an export tax on energy good to create revenue for government, it may not do so. The Province of Manitoba would have no Provincial debt if it were allow selling its Hydro electricity at the price that American Companies sell it to their own people.
The US has been given a complete waiver from the operation of the laws that limit or restrict foreign ownership of Canadian controlled financial institutions. US interests may take over every federally licensed financial institution in Canada. The US has been called "Canadian" in relation to the Bank Act, the Loan Companies Act, the Trust Companies Act, and the Insurance Companies Act. The US may take over Canada's major banks; Canada may not take over US banks.
The US is given "national treatment" in a huge number of service industries. That means US enterprises must be treated as Canadian. Among them a very few are health and social services, management of hospitals, extended-care hospitals, psychiatric institutions, children's hospitals, public health clinics, medical laboratories, etc. In the list also are printing and publishing, postal and courier services, almost all building trades, drug industries, and education services.
When either government considers that any measure (whether covered in the trade agreement or not) taken by the other country might directly or indirectly reduce benefits, the measure may be challenged before a disputes panel. Such statements throw a huge blanket over almost any freely chosen action a Canadian government might take to lessen the cost or increase the efficiency of, or extend the range of any government or nonprofit activity that offends US free enterprise interests.
Canada must grant unexamined "temporary" entry to an enormous range of people - among who are scientists, teachers, researchers, medical experts, journalist, librarians, etc. - as well as most corporate personnel in transfer, or other.
Canada must grant unexamined takeover of Canadian enterprises worth between 5 million and 150 million, and it must grant unexamined takeover by indirect acquisition of enterprises worth up to a half billion dollars.
Any time an American company (or a firm with American investors) uses water in Canada, that water use is covered by NAFTA. Whether Canada's water is being used domestically by an oil and gas company (water flooding: pumping water into the ground to extract oil and gas), a manufacturer, a hydro-electric company or a private-public partnership managing municipal supplies, if that company is American or has American investors, their rights to use that water are vested in NAFTA and are clearly superior to the rights of Canadians. And if those rights are denied, they have a right to compensation under NAFTA Chapter 11.
Water is already a good of trade. BC sells bulk, non-Treaty water out of the Columbia to the US every year as part of a long-term contract entered into over a decade ago. The Washington State town of Point Roberts is supplied by Canadian water. Numerous private sector firms have their profit centres tied to the sale of bottled Canadian water, much of which is shipped south. Large industrial users such as the oil and gas industry (for water flooding – accountable for up to 60% of groundwater withdrawals in Alberta's oil patch), manufacturers (e.g. pulp mills) and ski hill operators (for snow-making) rely on licenses to use water (or operate ungoverned by provincial statute).
If Canada is contemplating a project that the Americans want to participate in, our choice may well be inclusion or compensation. Consider the example of an irrigation project being undertaken to bring the southern area of a Prairie province under irrigation. American farmers – armed with expert reports - would be perfectly within their rights to argue: “Water is a good managed by the province on behalf of Canada’s farmers. American farmers have a right to National Treatment in the management of that resource. Here is the analysis that justifies a project capable of also meeting the needs of American farmers, here are the reports showing little environmental consequence, here is the money to pay for the up scaling; American farmers want to share in the irrigation benefits provided to Canadian farmers. The Project cannot be undertaken solely for the benefit of Canadian farmers if American farmers wish also to participate.”
It goes on and on and on.
American Businesses and Corporations invest in Canada not because they like Canadians or find Canadians friendly warm and fussy but that it is as profitable if not more profitable for them as if they where doing business in the United States.
There are many reasons why this exists here are but a few:
For example;
Canada’s National Medicare, which saves the average U.S. business roughly 38 cents on every U.S. Dollar of profit in employee medical benefits.
The ability to lobby the Canadian Government as a Canadian born Company not a foreign one.
Lower Liability and Legal costs. (example: malpractice lawsuits)
Lower employee wages
Lower employee benefits costs other then medical
More Graduated Employees with Higher Educational Standards then those found in the United States of America
Lower Operating costs including energy and natural resources.
It is clear that looking after our own domestic markets first and foremost will Canada be able to have control over its destiny as a free democratic country. Only by having diversified foreign trade agreements with other countries other then the United States, which has proven itself recently with the falling economy in the U.S. and Canada’s higher trade with South America, will Canada be able to enforce a level playing field with outside markets and free trade agreements with the United States. A level playing field is but a figure of speech then a reality in the trade between Canada and the United States of America. Canada must now move to process more of its own raw materials for market instead of sending it across the border to the United States of America in which the cost is becoming prohibitive. If we don’t, Canadians will soon not be able to afford to buy the finished goods that we have now come to depend on.
Forget NAFTA if Canada can not get a fair, level trading field and equal treatment with the U.S. then it means giving up Canadian Sovereignty. Ask yourself one thing, have you heard or read any article that told Canadians what NAFTA takes away from them or have you read and listen to how we must appease the U.S. before they rip up NAFTA. It always seems to me that those that want it are self serving self interested individuals that care not for or who are not loyal to Canada but to their own agendas and greed.
Is the rhetoric ill-considered? Well, there's a lot of evidence that NAFTA has hurt working people in all three countries and the main beneficiaries have been multi-national corporations. It has hurt high-paying manufacturing jobs and made effective environmental regulation difficult.
Feel free to post the evidence, Blair. Not rhetoric, but three peer reviewed papers!
Here's one "three peer reviewed" paper that argues otherwise.
Most commentators expected Canadian wages to fall in response to competition from lessunionized, less-educated workers in the southern United States. ...For all workers, the tariff concessions raised annual earnings. For example, the total FTA impact is a rise of 3 percent at both the industry level and the plant level. ... At the plant level, earnings rose for both production and non-production workers. At the industry level, earnings gains were concentrated among production workers. ... a 3 percent rise in earnings spread over 8 years will buy you more than a cup of coffee, but not at Starbucks. The important finding is not that earnings went up, but that earnings did not go down in response to competitive pressures from the U.S. South.
... unionization does not offer an explanation of modestly rising earnings.
... There is a presumption in the popular press that anything to do with globalization will worsen income inequality. It is thus reassuring that there is absolutely no evidence that the FTA worsened income inequality.
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~trefler/fta.pdf
And here's another that demonstrates trade has had little effect on growing income inequality.
http://benmuse.typepad.com/custom_house ... r-blu.html
And another
Although skill-biased technological change has generated rapid growth in the relative demand for more-educated workers for at least the past century, increases in the supply of skills, from rising educational attainment of the U.S. work force, more than kept pace for most of the twentieth century. Since 1980, however, a sharp decline in skill supply growth driven by a slowdown in the rise of educational attainment of successive U.S. born cohorts has been a major factor in the surge in educational wage differentials. Polarization set in during the late 1980s with employment shifts into high- and low-wage jobs at the expense of the middle leading to rapidly rising upper tail wage inequality but modestly falling lower tail wage inequality.
http://papers.nber.org/papers/w13568
And another
http://voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/524