The Rural Voice, 1981-01, Page 23KEITH ROULSTON
Canada should not isolate itself from the world
"No man is an island", the famous phrase goes. No man can
stand alone without being affected by those around him. No'
country can isolate itself from the world.
It would seem to. be a good argument for throwing open the
borders of all countries, for a move toward internationalism. But
Canada has recently been taught a lesson in international
wheeling and dealing, a lesson we have been taught over and
over again in past generations. When the war in Afghanistan
broke out Canada realized that it could not be an island. The
lesson of the pre -second World War period had been learned,
that we could not sit back and calmly watch a country expanding
its territory and hope the country would stop expanding before it
caused trouble to us.
So when the United States began making noises to let the
Soviet Union know that it was not going to sit idly by and let its
armies roll over smaller neighbours, Canada and other American.
allies were asked to help out. The U.S. proposed an Olympic
boycott of the Moscow Olympics and we agreed. The U.S.
proposed to cut off grain sales to the Soviet Union and Canada
and other countries agree:1 not to do anything more than live up
to contracts already signed.
The problem was when the Americans didn't sell their grain to
Russia, they had to find someone to take it. Their solution was to
tun to China and negotiate a huge deal there. The trouble for
Canada was that China is traditionally one of our largest
customers. someone, the U.S. hasn't dealt with extensively
before.
It's an old problem; an old lesson relearned. When the U.S.
has something it wants done, then that something is in the
interests of everyone and all its friends and neighbours are
expected to help out. But when it comes time to do something
that is in its own best interests, the Americans can quickly forget
about those same friends and take whatever action it thinks will
help most, no matter what the consequences for its allies.
There's not much way around it. We have to live with the
Americans as our largest trading partner and the most powerful
country in the world. We can't cut ourselves off from the
tensions of Afghanistan or the Middle East.
And yet we can do something to protect ourselves. Every day
or so you'll hear some politician or economist or farm leader
calling for fewer trade restrictions, more free trade. You'll hear
people talk about a common market between Canada and the
U.S.
In theory, of course, free trade m k :s sense. We practice it
ourselves in our daily lives. You can grow corn more efficiently
than the plumber could so you specialize in that and earn money
to pay the plumber to fix the plumbing on your farm because he's
more skilled and efficient at that than you. International free
trade should be the same: each country specializes in what it
does best and uses the profits it makes from the sale of those
products or services to buy the goods and services it doesn't do
well.
Like most theories however, it is only perfect on paper. In real
life some countries won't be efficient in anything, won't have the
natural resources, the land, the money, the technology to be the
best in the world at anyging. Therefore it will have nothing to
sell to get the things it needs. Some countries will produce a
product that is essential to all the other countries and may throw
a wrench in the works by deciding they will hold the whole
system up for ransom (take a look at the oil embargo.) Some
countries, because of huge population, because of wealth and
natural resources, are going to be good at producing many things
and since it will have more to sell and less to buy will get even
richer giving it more power. It will be able to win better deals for
the few things it wants to buy. And finally, the theory works
without regard to human emotion, but the three billion people on
this planet all have emotions. The whole free trade situation goes
down the drain when one country has a tiff with another and
picks up its ball and goes home.
Farmers have learned the lesson. Once farmers grew a little of
everything. They were protected from the down cycles in one
farm product by hedging their bets on others. They never got
buried because one farm product hit bottom, but they seldom got
rich either.
The free trade philosophy hit the farms with the age of
specialization and farmers specialized to the point where many
were left producing only one money crop whether it be livestock
or field crops. But after a few got burned by the down cycles of
production most farmers today cover themselves by diversifying
enough to protect themselves against the cyclical nature of their
business. They had to protect themselves.
It seems to me a country must be the same way. All countries
of course can't be self-sufficient in everything. Countries such as
ours must sell our surpluses abroad and if we're sellidg our
surpluses, we must be prepared to buy others'. Yet we cannot
afford to get so international in our perspective that we leave
ourselves vulnerable. We can't be an island, perhaps, but we
don't need to be a footpath for everybody to walk all over us
either.
W.D. HOPPER
& SONS
Water Well Drilling
R.R. 2 Seaforth
Members of the Ontario Water Well Assoc.
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Seaforth
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THE RURAL VOICE/JANUARY 1981 PG. 23