HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1991-10-23, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1991. PAGE 5.
And the British
call us dull
Canada is a country which excites the
imagination of the British peole.
British Prime Minister James
Callaghan, September 1976.
In a bulldog’s eye.
Arthur Black, Canadian Columnist,
October 1991.
Actually, I’m being unkind. The idea of
Canada does trigger the imagination of the
British people - but only in the wildest and
most hallucinatory way. Consider this
passage from a recent edition of the
Manchester Guardian - one of Britain's
“quality” newspapers. A correspondent by
the name of Ralph Whitlock is musing over
the contents of a letter he has received from
a Canadian friend. Ralph writes in the
Guardian: "Some of the encounters of man
with wildlife are frightening ... Elks (sic),
moose and other ungulates are known to be
unpredictable ... Bears overturn beehives and
frighten everybody ... Also, coyotes are
getting familiar with man and losing their
fear of him ... One even dragged a 16-year-
old from a campsite in Banff.”
By Raymond Canon
Don't be hastey
over free trade
with Mexico
Because of my support for a free trade
agreement with the United States, it was
suggested to me that I was probably just as
enthusiastic about a similar deal with
Mexico. It may, therefore, come as
something of a surprise when I tell you that I
am not yet certain what I think about such a
move; there are, to date, just a few too many
imponderables for me to make up my mind.
The result is, to use an old phrase, that I
believe we should make haste very, very
slowly.
For openers, I have to repeal something
that I have frequently emphasized in the
past. The correct expression is not “free
trade;” there is nothing totally free about
trade. The whole matter is one of “trade
liberalization,” in short, moving away from
protectionism toward a system which will
permit as high a level of liberalization as
possible. Try to think of the whole process in
that manner and you will arrive at a more
rational conclusion.
Ever since the end of World War II when
the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
was set up, we have been moving away from
protected trade. The first major step in this
country was the Auto Pact in 1965 and I feel
safe in saying that there are few people who
would claim that this has not been a success.
Yet at the time the labour unions, for one,
were totally against it; these are the same
unions who demanded that it not be changed
during the recent negotiations with the
United States that led to the Free Trade
Agreement.
Thus, what we are dealing with is a long
term trend and it appears that Mexico is the
next step in that trend. However, as I said
above, I am not yet sure that we are ready
for such a step. I would like to give the
recent agreement with the United States a
The amount of sheer balderdash in the
foregoing passage is quite astounding. The
only bears most Canadians ever see play
football for Chicago. Your average Canuck
wouldn't know a live elk from a tame
Rotarian. And a coyote “dragging a 16-year-
old from a campsite”? ‘Arf a mo’ there
Ralph, lad. My encyclopedia tells me the
average coyote runs about three and a half
feet from pointy snout to tip of fluffy tail.
And a mature adult weighs in at a whopping
30 pounds soaking wet.
The Queen's wussiest corgi could clean a
coyote's clock.
Old Ralph isn't the only Brit to view
Canada through Hollywood-coloured
sunglasses - or to blab about it in the daily
papers. A British actor by the name of John
Sessions recently whined and mewled all
over the pages of The Independent about his
terrible four-year ordeal in Canada. Mister
Sessions did not take well to life in the Great
White North. As a matter of fact, it drove
him to the slough of despair, the edge of
madness and beguiling thoughts of suicide.
Would he ever come to Canada again? He
would rather go to New York and be shot or
stabbed to death, he told slack-jawed
Independent readers. “At least” he sniffed
“New York is civilized.”
What bothered Mister Sessions most about
his sanity-sapping prison sentence in
few more years to operate so that we could
see what problems there are. The Free Trade
Agreement, any agreement for that matter,
was never meant to be perfect; it was
nothing more than a significant step in the
right direction. There are bound to be some
adjustments necessary and only time and
practice will show what the weak spots are.
One that has started to show up is the
dislocation of labour in any market
adjustments. We could probably have
worked out something that would make
these dislocations somewhat less painful. In
any agreement with Mexico, labour is going
to be a key segment, especially in the
unskilled or semi-skilled areas. We have
already seen some of our lower paid jobs
move there but the Americans are no more
secure in this aspect than we are. In any
concerns that have been expressed to date,
the loss of jobs has ranked near the top.
Canada needs a major retraining program to
cope with the dislocations connected with
any trade liberalization with the United
States; having to cope with the same thing
with another country would make this
program much more extensive, yet we have
done little more than scratch the surface on
that.
The next thing that we have to look at is
the question of the environment. Unless my
Spanish has suddenly become archaic, the
Dog's death angers writer
THE EDITOR,
One evening the week of October 10 on
the sideroad just off Cone. 13 of Huilett, our
registered purebred Plott Hound was killed.
She had been fed at 9:40 p.m. that night and
unknown to us worked her way out of her
run shortly after that - maybe she smelled
the scent of a raccoon. Our dogs are not
allowed to run at large.
I am not attaching any blame to the party
who hit her as I know it is unavoidable many
times, especially at night and her being
black, but she weighed 80 - 85 lbs. so they
had to know they hit something.
What makes it very hard for me to
Canada? “The hideous blizzards” he wrote.
“You simply couldn't walk above ground
from November to March.”
Well, I've never passed a winter squatting
on an Arctic ice floe or crouched shivering
in a log cabin listening to the trees crack and
the wolves howl in the wilds of B.C.'s
northern interior.
But then, neither has Mister Sessions.
Those ghastly lost years he moans about
were all spent within the city limits of
Hamilton, Ontario.
Clearly Mister Sessions' hatred of Canada
goes beyond stupidity or even malevolence.
The man is deluded. But why? Why do the
Brits get Canada so wrong?
I think the rest of Europe is to blame.
Continental Europeans have never been kind
about the English. They laugh at English
stuffiness and the wretched English cuisine.
Worse. Europeans joke about English ... you
know. Sex.
A woman French cabinet minister calls les
Anglais the world's most undersexed people.
A Czech humourist cracks “Continental
people have sex lives. The English have hot
water bottles.”
That explains the English penchant for
fantasy - Canada is a mere plaything for a
sexually deprived Dirty Old Country.
Canucks unite! We have nothing to lose
but our harem pyjamas!
Mexicans have a far worse problem than we
do; Mexico City has to be one of the most
heavily polluted cities in the world, let alone
North America. I, for one, would not like to
see Canada enter into any agreement with
Mexico if their industries continue to pollute
as they have in the past.
There are many things that we could sell
to the Mexicans, and they to us, under a
trade liberalization agreement but let’s learn
how to walk before we run. I would like to
see them, among other things, get their
population growth under control (by the turn
of the century they will have four times as
many people as Canada) but that is
somewhat of a vain hope as long as the
Roman Catholic Church exercises as much
control as it does. While Catholics in Canada
and the United States have generally ignored
the Vatican's dictum on this matter, that has
not been the case in Mexico. Pity!
Another reason for care is that Canada
really should get its act together as a country
before we look at any other agreement. Our
economy is struggling to get out of a
recession, our constitutional imbroglio is
with us and we are still in the process of
digesting the American agreement. It is far
belter to deal from a position of strength
rather than one of confusion. Ottawa please
take note!
understand and accept is that they made no
attempt to locate the owner (there are only
five or six farms around us). She was just
left lying on the edge of the road, tom open.
I found her the next day.
We had had her since she was six weeks
old for eight years. She was part of our
family and our friend.
I would just like to know how it happened
- attaching no blame.
I did not really think there were people out
there who would just leave her there but now
I know there are.
Betty
13th of Huilett.
Letter from
the Editor
By Keith Roulston
If this is better,
what could
be worse?
Surely by now even the proponents of
Free Trade must agree it hasn't been working
out the way it was supposed to.
It's nearly three years since Free Trade
was approved and the Canadian economy is
in worse shape than at any time since the
Great Depression. The hope that we had
fought our way out of the recession is fading
as more and more gloomy figures come out.
Those figures confirm what people in
business knew in their gut: that no matter
how much positive thinking we put into
convincing ourselves the recovery had
begun, things just aren't getting belter.
I know the supporters of Free Trade
will say there has to be some short term pain
for the long term gain but it would be nice to
see at least some hope of better days ahead.
So far, for every plant that has moved to
Canada, for every Canadian plant that
expanded to ship product to the U.S., we've
had several dozen close. Our economy has
shrunk. Unemployment is so bad people
have stopped looking.
But, Free Trade proponents will say,
that can't be blamed on Free Trade. High
interest rates are to blame. High taxes are to
blame. Uncompetitive Canadian wages are
to blame.
Right! And isn't that exactly what
those of us who opposed Free Trade
predicted? The government and the Bank of
Canada have tried to have a made-in-Canada
economic policy at the same lime as they
have an open-door trade policy. If the
government feels interest rates must be high
in Canada to fight inflation, then it is going
to make Canadian businesses uncompetitive
compared to neighbours across the border. If
it figures it must have more tax revenue, it
makes the business even more
uncompetitive. Businesses lay off workers.
Plants that can easily move, pack up the
moving van and head south.
Faced with not being able to match
costs, Canadian businesses that can't move,
have started pushing for a reduction in
spending on social programs- just as
opponents of Free Trade predicted. There are
pressures to reduce wages in Canada, to
bring them more in line with low-wage areas
of the U.S. (and heaven help us when
Mexico enters the picture with its $1 an hour
wages).
Take a look al what's happening in
farming. Farmers are already in crisis but
food processing plants are closing and
moving south. Several tomato processors in
Leamington have left, leaving tomato
growers without anywhere to sell their crops.
If they turn to com or beans, they produce
even more of these crops, driving prices
down even further. The Green Giant com
plant in London may close because the price
of sweet corn in the U.S. is $15 a ton
cheaper than in Canada. Farmers have the
choice of cutting prices or losing the plant
that buys their com.
It's part of a downward spiral that
won't end until our standard of living is
reduced to the American standard of living,
until our social programs are harmonized
with theirs, until all our attempts to build a
society different from America's are
abandoned.
Right now only the most vulnerable in
society are being hurt: workers in factories
that are moving, farmers, small businesses
that suffer because of the reduction of
money in the economy because of the jobs
that have been lost. So far members of big
unions and people sheltered by working for
government haven't felt the pain. As things
go on they will, because sooner or later,
there won't be taxes to pay the civil servants
and big factories will either get lower wages,
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