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  1. #1
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    NAFTA's legacy: the worst agreement we ever signed

    NAFTA's legacy: the worst agreement we ever signed
    by Murray Dobbin
    March 10, 2008

    In the aftermath of Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's threats to "renegotiate" NAFTA — or pull out — the usual suspects have been activated to tell the world how wonderful the deal has been for Canada and the United States.

    There is no doubt that the sector that devised the scheme in the first place and sold it to politicians have benefited greatly from this investors' rights agreement and its predecessor. The continent's largest corporations have greatly reduced regulatory impediments to their profits, radically lowered labour costs, gutted Canada's sovereign capacity to pass new environmental legislation and, in terms of investment restrictions, virtually erased the borders.

    All of those corporate benefits, however, have been extremely bad for other aspects of Canada and for ordinary Canadians.

    But first, let's dispose of a myth about free trade — the notion that it was responsible for massive increases in trade between the U.S. and Canada. According to an Industry Canada study, 91 per cent of the increase in trade in the 1990s was due to the cheap Canadian dollar and the sustained economic boom in the U.S. Now that our dollar is at par or higher, our manufacturing exports are plummeting.

    But even if NAFTA were responsible for increased trade, Canadian workers have paid a huge price. Throughout the 1990s, federal governments trumpeted the need to be "competitive" under NAFTA as an excuse to implement some of the most Draconian rollbacks of Canadian social programs ever undertaken. In the name of "labour flexibility," Paul Martin implemented drastic changes to EI eligibility, and repealed the Canada Assistance Plan, freeing the provinces to gut their welfare programs. His extreme low-inflation policy deliberately kept unemployment at high levels (8 per cent to 9 per cent) for most of the 1990s.

    That meant that, throughout the decade, workers' real wages actually declined. They still have not caught up to 1981 levels. And the highly paid 220,000 industrial jobs lost as a result of NAFTA are gone forever, replaced by lower-paid jobs.

    NAFTA was supposed to unleash a flood of foreign investment — boosting our industrial capacity and productivity. Instead, since the first trade agreement was signed, more than 95 per cent of direct foreign investment has been used to buy up Canadian companies. Head offices and research and development money has headed south, and Canada has seen a steady decline in manufactured goods as a percentage of its GDP for the past 10 years.

    Our productivity has fallen behind that of the U.S. in virtually every year since the FTA came into effect in 1989.

    The environment has also suffered almost continuously since the deals were signed — and this is according to the Commission for Environmental Co-operation, the NAFTA agency responsible for monitoring the impact of the new regime. The North American Mosaic: The State of the Environment Report, released in 2001, declared that "North Americans are faced with the paradox that many activities on which the North American economy is based impoverish the environment on which our well-being ultimately depends."

    It might also have mentioned that Canada has not passed a major new environmental protection law since NAFTA came into effect — at least not successfully. In two instances where it did try, NAFTA's investment chapter forced it to back off. In the Ethyl Corp. case, Canada tried to ban a gasoline additive, MMT, that damaged cars' catalytic converters (not to mention our health). The company sued under NAFTA and Canada withdrew the law. The resulting chill effect means we have no idea how many proposed new laws have been killed in their cribs.

    Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada is an energy "superpower." But NAFTA virtually guaranteed that the U.S. would be the beneficiary of our energy, and it unleashed a massive increase in energy exports to the U.S.

    Canada now exports 63 per cent of the oil it produces and 56 per cent of its natural gas to the U.S. And because of NAFTA's proportionality clause, Canada is legally obliged to continue exporting the same proportion of our oil and gas forever even if we face a shortage.

    Next up is our water. The U.S. is already officially into its supply problems and it will, over the next 20 years, become a catastrophic crisis, outpacing even their predicted energy crisis.

    NAFTA defines water as a good — meaning that, as soon as any provincial government signs a contract to export bulk water to the U.S. (by river diversion or tanker), nothing can stop further exports.

    All of this, and for what? Allegedly, it was for guaranteed, predictable access to the U.S. market. But, of course, as the softwood lumber saga proved, there is no such thing. When its history is written, NAFTA could rightly be described as the worst agreement ever signed by a Canadian government.

    Murray Dobbin writes from Vancouver. This column first appeared in The Globe and Mail.

    http://www.rabble.ca/columnists_full.shtml?x=68615
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  2. #2
    Senior Member avenger's Avatar
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    ...all this and the idiot Bush is pushing for the Peruvian agreement to further destroy American sovereignty!
    Never give up! Never surrender! Never compromise your values!*
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    Senior Member carolinamtnwoman's Avatar
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    And Bush had the audacity to issue a plea to the American people and Congress yesterday, while addressing the economy, to pass the free-trade agreement with Columbia, as if that were a solution to our problems!!! What a complete idiot!!!

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    Senior Member carolinamtnwoman's Avatar
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    I heard McCain mention during an interview recently that he will not support revisiting NAFTA and he described those [Hillary and Obama] who propose doing so as isolationists and protectionists!

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    After the Obama-Nafta story ran, I was able to catch a great interview with a guy named Jack Layton an MP in Canada for the New Democratic Party on Dobbs one day in the last week or so. He said some GREAT things to say about NAFTA and how it should be changed to serve our respective countries better. I wrote him that same day to say a big 'thanks'.

    I just received a reply from him which I will share below:

    Thank you for taking the time to write regarding the "Naftagate" leak by the Harper government. I have heard from many supportive Canadians and Americans.

    To update you on this issue, I want you to know that I have written to both Senators Obama and Clinton expressing the New Democratic Party’s support to stand up for working families by improving the continental trade deal. You can find out more be checking the following links: http://www.ndp.ca/page/6236, http://www.ndp.ca/page/6279, and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_MR7tL7tWs.

    Again, I appreciate your interest in this matter.

    All the best,

    Jack Layton, MP (Toronto-Danforth)
    Leader, Canada’s New Democrats
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    Quote Originally Posted by carolinamtnwoman
    I heard McCain mention during an interview recently that he will not support revisiting NAFTA and he described those [Hillary and Obama] who propose doing so as isolationists and protectionists!

    LOL Wouldn't that be nice if this were actually true! Mclame throws around the terms "isolationists and protectionists" as if they were evil relics from the cold war era.

    I for one would have no problem with a president who closed down our borders, looked to tend to the needs of Americans first, and abandoned the notion the United States has some legal or moral obligation to save the entire world through generous handouts and loans that are never repaid, rarely appreciated, but now expected.

    It's not our responsibility to subsidize every country on this planet through unbalanced trade agreements in which the United States continues to get the short end of the stick.

    It must have been one of those moments of truth when Mclame said he probably knew less about economics than he should, or something to that effect. Last time I checked, we had a huge trade deficit with China and the doctrine of protectionism may be just what the doctor ordered.

    I guess the problem with "isolationism and protectionism" is it does not fit into Mclame's grand vision of a global economy.

    That's the problem.
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  7. #7
    Senior Member carolinamtnwoman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PhredE
    After the Obama-Nafta story ran, I was able to catch a great interview with a guy named Jack Layton an MP in Canada for the New Democratic Party on Dobbs one day in the last week or so. He said some GREAT things to say about NAFTA and how it should be changed to serve our respective countries better. I wrote him that same day to say a big 'thanks'.

    I just received a reply from him which I will share below:
    I saw that too, PhredE. Thanks for Layton's link. I copied and pasted a few items of interest and forwarded it to my Rep. Heath Shuler. I have the personal email address for his assistant here in town and she forwards it to him when he's in Washington. It seems the SPP is more publicly exposed and scrutinized in Canada than in the U.S. Maybe because we're having to deal with illegal immigration and the SPP, which are, of course, interrelated...a double whammy!

  8. #8
    Senior Member carolinamtnwoman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by NoBueno
    Mclame throws around the terms "isolationists and protectionists" as if they were evil relics from the cold war era.
    McLame seems to resort to name-calling quite frequently. He also calls all of us anti-illegal immigration supporters racists and xenophobes!!!

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