NAFTA comes full circle within Conservative Party

Over the years my ‘old’ party, the federal Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, had many a discussion regarding NAFTA within its ranks, thanks to the influx of members behind the leadership of David Orchard. That debate was not always welcome within the party, and rarely were all sides engaged in fruitful discussion.

For my own part, while I recognized the concerns being promoted by Orchard and his supporters as being legitimate, at the time I felt that NAFTA did not need extraordinary focus. For all the talk of NAFTA Chapter 11 and its impact on Canada’s resource exportation, there was always Chapter 22 – termination – to lean back on. My thinking was that responsible government, held in check by the people who vote them in, would never trade away Canada’s sovereignty for fear of the public backlash.

My view has changed.

There’s no responsible government in sight, and the softwood lumber sellout only serves to prove this.

My party, the ‘new’ Conservative Party, is not standing up for Canada when it trades away hard-won legal battles in the name of political expediency to win an ‘apparent’ victory at home.

Messrs Harper, Emerson, Wilson, et al have not won anything but have demonstrated to much stronger forces that the rule of law is to mean nothing when it comes to our legal agreements with the United States.

Why is the Prime Minister of our country aiding and abetting powerful U.S. lobby groups and the politicians they control? How is that ‘standing up for Canada’?

When will the next powerful U.S. lobby group appear on the scene and have its way with Mr. Harper? Will it be the healthcare and drug lobby? Will U.S. businesses successfully argue along the same lines as the ‘stumpage’ argument the lumber lobby used, and portray our universal healthcare system as an “unfair advantage” over U.S. corporations? Will the privatization lobby within Canada link forces with the US in an attempt to ‘even the score’?

That’s not a far-fetched scenario. Rapidly increasing health care costs in the United States have cost U.S. automobile manufacturers significant pain.

For each mid-size car DaimlerChrysler AG builds at one of its U.S. plants, the company pays about $1,300 to cover employee health care costs—more than twice the cost of the sheet metal in the vehicle. When it builds an identical car across the border in Canada, the health care cost is negligible. Washington Post “A heftier dose to swallow”

When will the next well-lawyered U.S. lobby group launch an attack on Canada, and what will we give up then?

These attacks on Canada’s sovereignty have to stop.

This means of course that Canadians have to stop politicians that allow such attacks.