Hi BirdDog - You make some good points. Whether or not Canada and the States can continue good relations with respect to these different issues is open to question.
I PM'd another poster on this thread about the linkage between energy and NAFTA; it may illuminate some aspects of your post.
Most of what follows is from that PM; I hope the recipient will not mind...
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"First, a little background. In November of 1973, in the first Arab Oil Embargo, Esso of Canada had a supertanker carrying oil (on a paid-for contractual basis) from Venezuaela to a refinery at Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia. There was enough oil on that supertanker to carry the Maritimes, and eastern Quebec, through to the spring of '74.
At the same time, in New York City, people were lining up for hours to get gas. There were fistfights in the lineups. Truckers were outraged by Nixon's imposition of the double nickle - 55 MPH. Kissinger confessed that there was nothing much they could do.
In England, the television stations were turned off at 2230 hrs., and gas rationing was introduced.
But the real danger, unspoken everywhere, was that millions of people in apartments all over the world, (particularly in the States) would simply freeze to death.
Back to the supertanker: it never got to Nova Scotia. It was turned in at New Jersey. The oil was taken.
I was living in Halifax at the time, and I know this story is true.
The event caused a quiet uproar in Canada, though the matter was hushed up and glossed over.
Subsequent to that, our then-Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, embarked on a national policy of energy self-sufficiency. At tremendous expense, we bought out oil companies, and did, in fact, make ourselves self-sufficient, when you factor in our available reserves from Sable Island, the Tar Sands, and the Grand Banks-Newfoundland area. The cost was ruinous, and remains a significant part of our national debt.
After Trudeau, Brian Mulroney came to power, from the opposition Conservative Party. He, like all Maritimers, was familiar with the supertanker story.
Canada's appropriation of its own oil was beginning to be the subject of scathing criticism from the US.
Mulroney took an entirely different line of reasoning than Trudeau. He realized that, if such a situation presented itself again, Americans would not allow their own people to freeze to death: rather, they would, by force if necessary, take whatever energy we had.
In a masterpiece of realpolitik Mulroney conceived Canada's part in NAFTA. What few Canadians, and even fewer Americans realize, is that NAFTA is all about the US having access to Canadian energy reserves.
It was the thinking of Brian Mulroney that if Canada was going to lose the reserves anyway, then we might as well get paid for them. And so a key component of NAFTA is Canada's obligation to sell energy to the US - but at prevailing world prices.
I am not going to take you through the debate that raged through the land - including a memorable, no-holds-barred, finger-pointing and fist-shaking televised debate between Brian Mulroney and John Turner, then-candidates in national elections.
The deal was made. NAFTA went through, and America began the first steps that ensured access, at least, to energy, as long as it lasted, in North America.
In return for that (though you will NEVER see it explicitly stated) Canada gained an equal place with America in some previously unavailable industrial and economic sectors - particularly auto manufacturing.
Subsequently, we saw hundreds of thousands of jobs disappear, as our economy struggled to adapt to the changes. Many American subsidiaries, forced by previous law to manufacture in Canada if they wanted to sell in Canada, shut their doors, and left.
NAFTA, in my mind, is still a big question mark. But all in all, I see no benefit, for the US or Canada, in turning back the clock. We have become, for better or worse, tightly integrated economies, whose interdependence is a much-disputed foundation to our economic success in the last 25 years.
We are much better off with bilateral mechanisms to arbitrate disputes - even when they are ignored: for thus, we have accountability.
Much as I would like to turn back the clock, I realize that renouncing NAFTA will not bring a return to the golden Fifties: it will doom us both to a less competitive position."
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BirdDog, I think the linkage between energy and NAFTA is very, very strong.
It is dangerous (I think) for people to work themselves into paroxysms of anger and spite over these issues, but there are serious questions involved here, for Canada. We sacrificed billions of dollars to attain energy self-sufficiency: we then abandoned it because NAFTA negated the need.
If the United States now intends to simultaneously abandon NAFTA, and gain control of our energy resources, then we have a serious problem.
We will only be able to respond to it by embracing new alliances: ones that will change the existing balance of power in North America, for it will represent a deplorable failure (for reasons I won't state) of our previous relationships.
However, that remains to be seen. There is no point in puffery or bombastic nationalism here: the US and Canada need to seriously examine the nature of our relationship.
Only one thing is clear: Canada can take nothing for granted. If we cannot rely on a continuance of the former continental vision, neither can the United States.
Best regards,
Jim |
