With a new federal government, there is the renewed talk of a trade agreement with China. For decades, each successive government makes this announcement, like it was the Holy Grail, as if such agreements are the panacea to Canada’s economic woes. But do they truly serve Canadians’ interests?
Trade has been important to Canada in the past, with approximately 30 per cent of our GDP associated with it. Today, however, even though a low loonie should have been great for our manufacturing sector, we have seen little benefit. That is because that sector, along with others, have already been decimated by the decades of job loses and the lack of investments into economic infrastructure. So, who does such agreements benefit now?
For more than a century in Canadian politics, there has been this goal of Canada being a world leader, of Canada playing its part on the world stage. This has been the clarion call that has driven our involvement in international politics. But how much of this is just myth, a delusion? How much of this has become the means to distract Canadians from our own realities?
In truth, we have all wanted to play at being the hero, to live with largesse, to be the “big man on campus,” but in experience, Canada’s influence, what little there was, has slowly been squandered over time. Now, when we sit down at these trade negotiations, many of the terms are dictated to us. Just look at the most recent Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiated in secret, with foreign corporations having more influence on those terms than Canada, a second-tiered state at that table. China has also announced that it will demand terms that will give it extraterritoriality powers, all because we are driven by a want for foreign direct investment. Such a move would be turning us into a de facto colony again.
These imposing trade agreements are not really in Canada’s interests, but trade still is. We should be looking toward agreements that truly assist the majority of our economy, one that is mostly comprised of small and medium enterprises – just like our economy from the past. We need to look toward opportunities in which we truly can lead. Historically, Canada has led within the Commonwealth, and in 1932 it helped create the preferential trade system to offset the power of the U.S.
The Commonwealth reaches across the globe, and it offers us every opportunity that these other trade agreements do: six of the countries in the TPP are Commonwealth countries; most of the Americas are Commonwealth countries, as is Africa; India, a Commonwealth country, is better suited for a partnership with Canada than China. A common rule of law and heritage further suggests the importance of this institution to Canada. But if this still seems like fantasy, the U.K. is currently examining the resurrected role of the Commonwealth to offset its relations with the EU. Maybe it is time that Canada re-examine what has worked for us in the past.
John Kennair is an international consultant and doctor of laws who lives in St. Albert.
