Newsgroups: can.general
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!tjhorton
From: tjhorton@csri.toronto.edu (Tim Horton)
Subject: Re: Free Trade: Why is there no 'Plan B'?
Message-ID: <8811140611.AA17765@harbord.csri.toronto.edu>
Summary: is there any plausible plan B?
Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI
References: <410@telly.UUCP>
Distribution: can
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 88 01:11:55 EST

In article <410@telly.UUCP> evan@telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
>Somehow I don't think the free trade deal is EITHER as bad as opponents say
>it is, nor do I think it's as good as its proponents claim. [...]
>
>More than anything, I am saddened that there is no "Plan B". The Conservatives
>have pinned all their economic strategies on unbridled trade with the country
>which [ridicule applied here].  Why have we not been talking to other countries
>or economic blocs about free trade?  Have we been lobbying the EEC? Japan?
>ANYONE else but the U.S.?

Does 'Plan B' with anyone else make sense?  Would it be worth the hassle to set
up a free trade agreement with Japan?  with the (many countries in) the EEC?

Say you had a small company out in Mississauga selling flour mill control
systems (why do I pick this example, you may ask).  You and all your employees
speak English, are comfortably settled within 40 miles of Toronto, and know a
smattering of French.  Are you going to fall head over heals to make moves
into Spain and Belgium?  Not likely.

These are much smaller economies than the US, much much farther away and less
accessible, and with 2 minor exceptions having different languages.  We already
maintain a huge proportion of our trade around the US.  Free trade or no, we
earn something like 1/4 of every dollar of our income in dealings over the
American border.  We can make it easy, or we can make it hard...

The only thing I can see that's bad in this agreement is the purported access
to Canadian energy resources.

But then, I personally think we've already sold them.  Consider the enormity
of a federal deficit grossing in the hundreds of billions of dollars and a
population on a par with California.  I think the main reason anybody continues
to invest in Canadian debt is Canada's natural resources (and underexamined
image).  Surely we won't be able to get out from under the debt we've
accumulated (yet our socialist complacency ignores such realities;  it can't
be 5 years before we sink like some Brazil).  I honestly fear people may
misread the impending economic impact of our debt as a consequence of this
agreement.  We have to face the fact that Canadians are incredible ignorant
of governmental deficits and their coming ramifications, and upheavals will
be common as a result of the agreement.  Proximity of events is quite likely
to finger the wrong cause, in that atmosphere.