The Written Word
for July 4, 2001

This being American Independence Day perhaps it’s a good time to think of relations with our neighbour to the south. Our relationship has always been a prickly one going back to the time of the United Empire Loyalists. But they’ve always been there and always will be.

We have resisted "Manifest Destiny" – at least we did up to a point. In 1846 we gave away the State of Washington which should have been ours but we did resist President Polk’s cry of "54’40" or Fight" which would have given British Columbia to the States. Hush up, you in the back row, who are saying "more’s the pity".

The Canadian image of the predatory Yankee was so well summed up by Thomas Haliburton’s Sam Slick, an image that prevented free trade in 1911 and postponed it until 1990.

Now, it seems to me, we’re being asked to re-evaluate our relationship.

Nafta has been a success – not an unqualified success but a success for all that. Trade with our two partners is up enormously. Our jobs have not all vanished to Mexican peons along the Rio Grande. What the experts said would happen did – Mexico is not only becoming more prosperous it is actually democratic and to the great surprise of the hard left is actually doing something about working conditions and the environment.

One thing the left has said – and very loudly – is true:. There has been a loss of Canadian sovereignty. And there will be more.

What we tend to forget is that this cuts three ways. There is a loss of sovereignty in both the United States and Mexico and people there are complaining bitterly about that. The fact remains that every time a country agree to forbear a national right it loses some sovereignty.

What we also tend to forget is that Canadians have far more capital invested in the United States than it does here. The Americans have much more to howl about re foreign ownership than Canadians do.

The talk now is of extending Nafta to the so-called "southern cone" to include Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. It will happen in spite of the Council of Canadians and what’s left of the left.

What will this mean?

Almost certainly that we’ll all use the American dollar resulting in a huge loss of sovereignty. But it will make sense to have one currency for such a huge trading partnership and that currency would surely be the Yankee dollar. It will come just as sure as the Euro will come to all the European Community including Britain.

It seems to me that we are wasting a great deal of our national energy in this exercise. Not that we shouldn’t be expending the energy but that we should be directing it towards how we can move ahead yet protect our way of life.

It’s not as if we need worry about losing our democracy – it already is second class at best compared to the US. What we should be concerned about is retaining our social values – such things as medicare, employment insurance and workers’ compensation. And, of course, we must guard our ability to be more than hewers of wood and carriers of water for the United States although perhaps those in Western Canada have already become used to that role.

It’s not too late to opt out. We could give notice and leave Nafta. Many Canadians would like to do that. We must know, however, that if we do we voluntarily become a trade orphan. Nafta will grow without us. Europe is now almost federalized. At least two Asian groupings are in the works. I don’t say that people will refuse our products just that they will not be preferred much less protected.

These are times of enormous change. It’s time Canadians debated these proposed changes instead of either demonstrating against what we fear they’ll be or sitting on our hands assuming that Big Daddy in Ottawa knows what’s best for us.