Canadian, Eh?

This is a very small part of the problem, we export all raw materials and eliminate productions jobs in the process. Canada could make many items right here, so the question is why don't we?

I did find a great site on the internet, made in Canada, called nightsinwhiteflannel which makes nightshirts, pj's for kids and adults, out of the traditional Canadian flannel blankets, they are great. Well made, rugged,and warm.

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If I stand for my country today...will my country be here to stand for me tomorrow?

I had it out with the local mayor who was promoting our city with "I love Surrey" pins - made in China. I cornered him and asked if they even sourced out any Canadian makers - his answer - "no we went with price". That says it all.

Now that I looked for that pin to see if I still have it, I found one of those magnetic flashing Canadian flag pins. Guess where it was made.... yep you guessed it - China. Nothing against the Chinese but bugger - do they make EVERYTHING nowadays?

I think Canadian babies are still made in Canada; though I cannot say for sure because I live in the UK. Maybe someone should check.

I just finished reading No Logo by Naomi Kleine (finally). Why virtually everything is sourced out of the country is explained very well in the book. Bottom line is controll over workers and ever increasing profit margins for shareholders and executives through low, lower, lowest wages.

Of course that is not surprising in and of itself. What I did find surprising was how modest a price increase of the end product that would be required to pay people working in a manufacturing plants a living wage and some benifits. Or better yet, a slightly more modest profit for all involved.

Armed with this attitude Naomi suggests that keeping manufacturing in Canada (North America) is actually very feasible.

Oh my god! We don't make trinkets! how terrible!

Perhaps the good professor would like to buy an airplane, car or subway train instead? Or should we convert those industries to trinket making?

it's called "comparative advantage" which basically says we should do what we're best at. it's also one of the most popular ways that our business community (including politicians) rationalizes the current situation. the truth is, even the US was a staple exporter at one point. what was the first US multinational corporation? singer sewing machines of course!

canada wasn't always a reservoir of resources for the US; the engines for the first steamship to cross the atlantic were entirely made 100% in canada & canada has always made some of the best steel in the world. gordon laxer's "open for business: the roots of foreign ownership in canada" & RT naylor's "history of canadian business 1867-1914" both cover this stuff in great detail.

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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 problem is not that we don't make trinkets, but we don't make anything. Try to find any product made in Canada. According to World Bank figures, in the mid '80s 13% of Canada's exports were raw materials, the latest I've heard was 68%. We have a foreign owned open pit copper and gold mine about half hour drive from our place. We're about 1 km from the road, but we can hear the ore trucks day and night, taking Canada's natural capital, unprocessed, to the ships and out of the country, while the site is a mess of chemical pollution running all over and into the waters and the workers are forced to work 12 hour shifts for 7 days, then 7 days off. A totally irresponsible system, but we must welcome foreign investors.

Years ago there were hundreds of small manufacturing plants in every city and many communities. Now there are virtually none, thanks to this crime of "globalized free trade". I've spent 57 years in agricultural production and in manufacturing, 48 as owner manager and can assure anybody, even pinhead economists, that Canada could be self sufficient, with the appropriate increase in creative employment and incomes, in the vast majority of products.

This doesn't include idiocies like growing bananas in hothouses. Trade is a very important fact, but there's a world of difference between trade, which is the logical and efficient exchange of goods for equal values, against commerce, which is the buying and selling for obscene profits, destroying the world.

As far "comparative advantage" is concerned, Canada could be on the top of the world, but David Ricardo didn't include the free movement of capital in his theory and it should never be permitted, especially today with unlimited amounts of imaginary money created by the banks to colonize and exploit anything and anybody with the tacit approval of governments.

The exploitation of other countries, where governments are willing to enslave their own for the benefit of foreign owners, is against the principle of real comparative advantage, because "monetary efficiency" doesn't exist. It is a fraud invented by neoclassical economists. There is no such thing as "cheap", or "cheaper", because monetary values are not realities, but temporary perceptions and mean nothing in the overall scheme of things. Human labour doesn't cost anything to an economy and businesses are NOT the economy.

The old textbooks warned against overcapitalization, which meant investment of over 1 wage year per job, because it forces the servicing of the investment to come from the sale of resources, in other words, the sale of real capital, which is not an income for a business, therefore also not for a country, or society, regardless of what politicians and economists say.

Today we have $2.and $3. million investments in $30,000 a year jobs. This means that the country and the whole world is going broke and into self destruction to service overcapitalization by artificial capital. Even today millions of jobs could be created in Canada with $15,000 investments, if we had a real economy, instead of this crime wave of neoclassical economics, based on the infinite inflation of capital.

I started my first manufacturing business in Vancouver in 1957 with a $500 bankloan and within a few weeks I was employing a dozen skilled tradesmen. This could easily be done today with the appropriate inflationary increase in investment and $15,000 per job would be more than enough. Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.

"This doesn't include idiocies like growing bananas in hothouses. "

People in florida eat Ontario hothouse tomatoes, dare to dream, Ed!

What if fuel and transportation costs operated according to something remotely resembling an actual free market? What if foreign banana growers were subject to offsetting tariffs when their production practices violated Canadian law and thus gave tropical producers unfair "comparative" advantage? What if foreign growers and shippers had to adequately insure their use of our ports against risk of invasive species and other now-taxpayer-assumed public liabilities?

The matter would then be not the ludicrousness of the "Canadian hothouse banana", but whether sufficient demand would exist in Canada for true price of bananas, hothouse or otherwise, and whether domestic investment in glass and concrete could compete.

Ed, you have interpreted several of my replies as antagonistic, possibly due to unclear or impolitic writing on my part, and possibly due to my forgetting to log in and so having other anonymous posts falsely attributed to me. I apologize for any offense caused; I am generally sympathetic to your points of view and would not wish to discourage them, even if I could!

I never made a secret of the fact that I'm a protectionist, economic nationalist, just as I'm protecting my family, property and livestock.

Not the slightest bit for jingoistic, flag waving, but for rational management and democratic decision making reasons and purposes. Based on a lifelong experience, growing up in the Great Depression, WW2, long periods of starvation, homelessness, refugee camps and barracks for 6 years, plus 48 years in independent business, I maintain that economics must be based on localized, ground up systems. Monocropping in farming and economics demands ever increasing energy inputs for lesser and lesser benefits, because it is against the natural order of things

Neoclassical globalization is a dismal failure that's killing millions every year, apart from depriving people from the development of their natural talents, causing stress, major illnesses, substance abuse, crime, family breakdowns etc. These have been well documented with accurate statistics. Not everybody can become a computer programmer and if I'd have to work in an office, I'd rather be dead.

"Costs can not be cut, only transferred on other sectors, or the environment." The above problems, plus pollution, climate change, etc. endangering the world are the uncalculated, deferred costs, yet they in effect raise the GDP and are calculated as benefits. This shows the stupdity of the theory.

I have to go now to do some useful work, but I would say that the tariff and protection systems we had here in Canada before "free trade", worked very well and everybody was better off as the result. So we don't have to look for any new solutions, but can build on past precedents. Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.