The latest rumours of a soft-wood lumber deal that would sell out the industry and several provinces to a US brokered deal that would impose managed trade quotas on Canadian exports to the US, allow the Americans to keep close to a billion dollars in illegal dutues and impose a surge tax on exports that exceeded US quotas are evidence of the weak kneed approach of the Harper government to the Americans.
Clearly smelling an easy victory the Bush administration is poised to take us to the cleaners over the deal. Let us recall what the original free trade deal was supposed to be all about. Unrestricted access to the American market place in exchange for which we gave up control over our most precious and most valuable natural resources, oil and natural gas. This was a huge concession on our part, one that incidentally Mexico wisely never made to join Nafta.
At the time the Americans according to quite reliable American sources that I have learned of over the years regarded our negotiators as a pushover, unlike the Mexicans who they believed were much tougher in protecting Mexican interests than we had been in protecting ours.
Its a good thing that most of the lumber industry, several provinces and the American home builders are urging rejection of the proposed deal. It would be a travesty to accept it. Its time we thought harder about a new strategy for trading with the rest of the world than the current approach which has cost us far too much in yielding our sovereignty with little to show in terms of unrestricted access.
Free trade is a two way street not a one way American expressway.
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