A rchive Date
[ 09-08-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Why would the Yanks want us?
By TED BYFIELD
The Edmonton Sun
August 6, 2000
A federal survey describes Canadians as "worrying" that increased American participation in the Canadian economy will soon make us into the 51st state of the Union, the Victoria Times Colonist reported last week.
The survey was conducted at the behest of the Department of National Defence. It was not scientific. It consisted focus groups in each of six cities. It was not, in other words, a poll.
Nevertheless, it found Canadians concerned that the Americans will "plunder" our resources if they continue to take over Canadian corporations and play an ascending role in the Canadian economy. If the survey offered a solution to this, none was mentioned in the Times Colonist.
Two days later, Industry Canada produced another study. It showed that Canada now has a lower standard of living than the poorest regions in the U.S. - 10% lower than the Louisiana-Mississippi-Texas area, and a full 40% lower than New England which enjoys the highest standard of living in the U.S.
Even Alberta, which has the highest standard of living in Canada, ranks lower than 17 U.S. states, and Ontario which has Canada's second highest is surpassed by the standard of 35 American states and Alberta.
All of which causes one to wonder: How long can we maintain a loyalty to Canada when we see ourselves sliding downward, watch our children leave the country because they'll earn far more down there, while we pay tax rates that soar above those paid by Americans?
Think what this survey is saying. Your income and mine would be anything up to 40% higher, with everything that implies, if we didn't insist upon being Canadian. No wonder people are beginning to ask: What exactly does our Canadianism gain us?
Well, for starters, it means we can be run by Ottawa instead of Washington? (My, my, what an advantage!)
Moreover, our corporate head office is located in Toronto instead of New York? Well, actually, our Toronto head office, often as not, reports to another head office in New York. (So much for that advantage.)
Maybe it's because we can have Jean Chretien for prime minister instead of Bill Clinton for president. (Some advantage!)
Or because we can celebrate Canada Day on July 1, instead of Independence Day on July 4? (Eh? Come again!)
Or that we can have the CBC to watch as well as CBS, NBC and ABC? (Well, actually we watch the American networks and their shows far more than we watch the CBC anyway.)
Well, there must be some advantage to being Canadian, though it's certainly difficult to quantify.
It has something to do with our great forests and lakes. Notice that whenever a TV advertisement seeks to arouse Canadian patriotism, we get the picture of the summer sunset over the lonely lake with the call of the loon.
The call of the mosquito is delicately omitted. Notice also that they never seem to show the winter sunset (at 4 in the afternoon) over the ice-bound lake with the wind frost-biting your cheek and the fuel line frozen. We don't actually live among those forests and lakes and know very little about them. We huddle within 160 kilometres of the American border.
But we enjoy visiting them in the summer - accompanied by droves of Americans who also like to visit them, and they have anything up to 40% more income to do it with.
The point is that as the gap between us and the Americans widens, people are going to wonder about these mysterious advantages. And when they do, our "worry" that we're becoming American will become an "expectation" we're becoming American, and then a "hope."
It will be a false hope. Why would Americans want us? They have all the advantages of proprietorship and none of the costs.
They get the pick of the resources and the pick of the people. But it is we, not they, that must contend with the Quebec nationalistic problem, the Atlantic economic problem, and the western aboriginal problem. All these problems cost huge sums of money, if not to solve, at least to evade.
The Americans don't need this. They'd rather let us handle it. And pay for it. And also watch our comparative living standard slide ever downward in the process.
Letters to the editor should be sent to sun.letters@ccinet.ab.ca
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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