Summary of New York Times article by Joseph Nocera:
Memo to the United States of America regarding Canada
1.Softwood lumber
Unfortunately for our side, the North American Free Trade Agreement arbitrators have consistently ruled in Canada’s favor. After the latest – and supposedly final – such ruling a few weeks ago, the United States trade representative, Rob Portman, announced that the United States would ignore it and refuse to refund $5 billion in tariffs [imposed on Canadian softwood lumber by the US] it has collected in the last five years. (The American position is that the ruling is pre-empted by a parallel proceeding at the World Trade Organization.)
THE stance has made our friendly neighbors to the north a lot less friendly – in fact, the country is absolutely up in arms. Canada’s trade minister even walked out of softwood lumber negotiations recently, to the universal applause of his countrymen. “What is there to talk about?” asked Senator Pat Carney, a former trade minister who now represents British Columbia. “We won. The Americans won’t abide by the rule of law.” That pretty much sums up the sentiment of the entire country.
…
Note the softwood lumber problem dates back to the beginning of the Bush administration. Canada could retaliate by blocking the sale of Terasen, a natural gas pipeline to a Texas company.
- Two Canadian banks, CIBC, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and TD Toronto Dominion were involved in the Enron scandal and are forced to repay billions of dollars. They are forced to pay much larger amounts than US banks who were involved in the scandal.
- Canada’s airline, Air Canada is in the money again after declaring bankcruptcy. The author recommends this solution for Delta.
- Canada’s tar sands will yield amounts of oil second only to the Saudis. Mr. Cheney will be visiting them soon.
Mr. Camarta told me that Vice President Dick Cheney would visit the oil sands next month. Memo to Mr. Cheney: Can you settle the softwood lumber dispute while you’re there? With all that oil, do we really want Canada mad at us?
- The author doesn’t mention a more important resource that America literally thirsts for and that is WATER.
Canada has 20% of the world’s fresh water supply and so far it restricts bulk exports.
It has been said that water will be “the oil of the 21st century,” or “liquid gold,” and that it will cause wars between nations. Whatever happens with regard to global water, and the environmental, economic and political fallout, Canada will be a major player. Talks have intensified during the past few years on whether Canada should take advantage of its bountiful supply of water by selling it for profit – like gas, oil and timber. http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/water/
US politicians have taken Canada for granted for waaay to long. Bush and his idiots have just taken the arrogance and billshit to a whole new level. Worse, they have fostered the utterly assinine idea in many American’s heads that it doesn’t matter what other countires think about us and those of us who know better will be suffering along with them for decades to come.
Welcome to NAFTA world. Thanks Bill.
our natural resources including water are considered to be products. Thanks Bill.
your hands for a couple of days. Boy, I would like to know the size of his security when he visits. Why don’t they just send him a video of the tar sands and some oil revenue figures?
A couple thousand US troops.
And they’ll be staying for a few years.
Alberta’s government is expected to welcome them with open arms, and invite them to take their pick of local resources, people included. (Can you tell that I don’t like Alberta’s government much?)
</snark>
The thought of Cheney in my back yard makes me shudder. Oh the orgasms these egotistical and shameless Conservative politicians will have here when Cheney sets foot on our soil. Greedy bastards – every last one of them.
I wonder how arrogant and lawless we can get? Or how much more lawless-damn, now if only Canada would consider intervening-after all,sharing the continent with a rogue nation can’t be a good thing..I’m stocking up on flowers and a big red carpet just in case.
We have FOUR submarines, oops make that 3, one of them caught fire and is being refitted AGAIN. We have helicopters too, oops our Sea Kings keep crashing.
Come to think of it, we might not be able to invade.
But we can retaliate. I don’t want a Texas company buying Terasen, formerly BC gas, because the Bush family might have shares in that company.
Just remember most Canadians are upset with the Bush administration and its supporters, not all the American people.
sybil, I read this the other day, Ottawa should stop its ‘tirades,’ U.S. says:
Now if that’s not a slap in the face. Talk about pissing people off.
BRING IT ON!
That’s the language they use and understand, right?
Seriously, why the hell would Canada want to negotiate when they know it really means the US will force it’s own agenda. There’s no negotiating with these guys.
We’ve been learned on their idea of what constitutes US/Canada relations in the GW Bush era … And now it appears we’re going start some (trade) wars in order to talk at their level.
Just great.
It’s a warning memo to his own country.
We live in a world where an American business reporter writes a diplomatic article about US/Canada relations while the US Ambassador to Canada speaks to us in an arrogant condescending manner.
Diplomacy is dead in Bush’s America.
I was kind of amazed when they picked another arrogant jerk to be ambassador to Canada…but look who they sent to the UN. They’ve got to run out of arrogant jerks sometime…don’t they?
..from one who lives here and sees it being talked about a lot at our site.
At the moment, export taxes on oil and natural gas have so far been ruled out by the federal government’s main ministers.. but things that are being looked at as prime targets are Florida Citrus, California Wine, and Midwest corn imports.
As this goes on.. the pressure to hit oil and gas with an export tax will only increase.. The theory is to put the export taxes on the energy until the 5 billion $ in illegal dutes collected by the US on softwood lumber is met.. (and more if the US continues to refuse to yield to NAFTA and WTO trade law)
What the hell does Wilkins know about Canada? He’d only been here once – some decades ago on a trip to Niagara Falls before he was annointed as ambassador. If he tries to get tough like Cellucci did, we’ll damn sure let him know how well that goes over in this country. He do best to be nice. We do have power here and we’re not afraid to use it.
He has been censured apparently. According to the G & M he has changed his tone to a more concilliatory one. Washington must be getting the negative feedback. Of course that won’t lessen his massive ignorance of Canada.
Coming from one who lives Up North, I can say that it’s hard to underestimate the level of resentment the Softwood lumber dispute has caused against the States. Now this doesn’t mean that we all care about forestry – I’d say that the vast majority of the population don’t understand the details of the dispute, and don’t particularly care to. What pisses us off is the lack of fairness going on here.
As a population, we seem to believe in that notion pretty strongly – maybe it’s a left over from the Brits. As an example, in the middle of the Gomery inquiry (an inquiry over a corruption scandal that almost directly implicates the sitting Prime Minister), no one wanted an election. The PM’s argument at the time was “Look, I’ve screwed up. We’ve got an inquiry going, but let me keep my job until it’s over, so I can then call an election and I’ll get a fair shot at staying in power once the whole situation is clear.” And this worked – polls at the time showed a large opinion that he should go, but a larger one that it’s only fair to wait until the report is released before we judge completely.
This is what pisses us off about Softwood. We went through the process, and gave the US a fair shot at proving that what they were doing wasn’t illegal. We went through a system they set up, and came out of it on the winning side – to which the US responds by ignoring the result. In short – we played went by the American rules and played fair, and in return we get nothing. We worked our way through the system, and when the system gave us a win, it didn’t count. We’re also offended by calls that “negotiation, not litigation, is the way forwards” both because we tried (unsuccessfully) to negotiate, and we’re certain that if the stakes were reversed, the American ambassador wouldn’t be singing the same tune.
So we’re unhappy about this. It’s not the kind of thing that one starts a conversation over, but if the US comes up in one, you can bet a few words of agreement over our collective unhappiness with our neighbors down south will come out.
to pay attention to Canuckistan until the CBC ends her strike/ lockout…
I really can’t be expected to pay attention if no one is telling me what to pay attention to, now can I?? 🙂
Seriously though, yeah, it’s aboot time people started talking about NAFTA again.
cheers sybil, good to see you!
I had to put on 5 CD’s for consolation but it didn’t work.
Saturday afternoon without the CBC? awful!
And Telus, although I gave the picketers the thumbs up, I am worried about my phone service. What if my cheap cell phone konks out?
What is the good of NAFTA or any international treaty when the USA defies them?