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Thursday, November 1, 2012
Togetherness
And why is a Canadian posting a U.S. political ad on his blog? Because whatever happens to America happens to us too. And we don't want another 'Dubya' fiasco any more than you do.
Ray, I've been thinking about this post and am curious.
You said "Because whatever happens to America happens to us too".
Could you expand on that? I mean you have a totally seperate Government than we do and I don't understand what we do, can affect your country like you say.
In a nutshell, the vast majority of our trade is with the USA, and upwards of 70% of our major businesses are American-owned or controlled. Our economy has traditionally been heavily dependent on the USA and while we are presently trying to diversify that trade, we're still very much affected by whatever is happening economically and politically in the USA. As a result, of course, a lot of our people depend on this trade and business relationship for their employment, so if your country decides to adopt a more 'protectionist' attitude with respect to foreign trade and investments, that has a direct and immediate effect on us in Canada.
In many respects, Canada functions quite similarly to another of your American states with respect to trade & commerce with your country.
And that's why I said "whatever happens to America happens to us too."
Our power lines connect to yours, tying our electricity grid into yours, and our pipelines connect with yours, exchanging products between the two countries. Militarily, we also co-operate, and while our total military personnel probably numbers fewer than the NYPD, we've been your first line of defense in the Cold War for decades, and if your USAF shot down a Russian ICBM, it would most likely come down on Canada somewhere.... and we've been keenly aware of all that for a long time. NORAD watches for more than Santa Claus coming down from over the North Pole, for sure.
Great information Ray. I really didn't know the economic relationship between Canada and the US. I'm thinking of the frustration there must be of being so tied to this country economically, but not having any say, at all, on it's political system.
Yes, there are times when it does seem frustrating, and there are times when we wonder if our American neighbors really do know what they are doing. Ours is a resource-based country, and a lot of those resources go over the border to your country. Here in British Columbia for example, until the recent decline in it, our forestry industry provided a lot of the softwood lumber that built many of the homes you live in. And during that electricity crisis in California in 2000/2001 our B.C. Hydro provided hundreds of millions of dollars worth of electricity to California when its then-Governor Gray Davis asked for our help. As soon as those blackouts and brown-outs were over, Governor Davis and his pals claimed we'd gouged them on the prices, even though those prices were set by their own regulator, and as a result, we're still owed over $400-million for that power, because they refused to pay us.
And during all that, we sucked down the reservoirs at our biggest hydro-electric sites to the point where we would have been in big trouble ourselves if anything else had gone wrong about then. But our friends in California weren't thinking about that - they were only worrying about their own re-election prospects. We're still doing business with them, but it's in spite of our better judgement, not because of it. And we need the money.... so yes - there are frustrations sometimes. But regardless of all that, we're all in this together, and on average it works out very well. We hope it continues to do so.
Ray, I've been thinking about this post and am curious.
ReplyDeleteYou said "Because whatever happens to America happens to us too".
Could you expand on that? I mean you have a totally seperate Government than we do and I don't understand what we do, can affect your country like you say.
"Could you expand on that?"...
ReplyDeleteI'll try. Here's an article about it which may help.
In a nutshell, the vast majority of our trade is with the USA, and upwards of 70% of our major businesses are American-owned or controlled. Our economy has traditionally been heavily dependent on the USA and while we are presently trying to diversify that trade, we're still very much affected by whatever is happening economically and politically in the USA. As a result, of course, a lot of our people depend on this trade and business relationship for their employment, so if your country decides to adopt a more 'protectionist' attitude with respect to foreign trade and investments, that has a direct and immediate effect on us in Canada.
In many respects, Canada functions quite similarly to another of your American states with respect to trade & commerce with your country.
And that's why I said "whatever happens to America happens to us too."
Our power lines connect to yours, tying our electricity grid into yours, and our pipelines connect with yours, exchanging products between the two countries. Militarily, we also co-operate, and while our total military personnel probably numbers fewer than the NYPD, we've been your first line of defense in the Cold War for decades, and if your USAF shot down a Russian ICBM, it would most likely come down on Canada somewhere.... and we've been keenly aware of all that for a long time. NORAD watches for more than Santa Claus coming down from over the North Pole, for sure.
Great information Ray. I really didn't know the economic relationship between Canada and the US. I'm thinking of the frustration there must be of being so tied to this country economically, but not having any say, at all, on it's political system.
ReplyDelete@ Tommy -
ReplyDeleteYes, there are times when it does seem frustrating, and there are times
when we wonder if our American neighbors really do know what they are doing. Ours is a resource-based country, and a lot of those resources go over the border to your country. Here in British Columbia for example, until the recent decline in it, our forestry industry provided a lot of the softwood lumber that built many of the homes you live in. And during that electricity crisis in California in 2000/2001
our B.C. Hydro provided hundreds of millions of dollars worth of electricity to California when its then-Governor Gray Davis asked for our help. As soon as those blackouts and brown-outs were over,
Governor Davis and his pals claimed we'd gouged them on the prices, even though those prices were set by their own regulator,
and as a result, we're still owed
over $400-million for that power, because they refused to pay us.
And during all that, we sucked down the reservoirs at our biggest hydro-electric sites to the point where we would have been in big trouble ourselves if anything else had gone wrong about then. But our friends in California weren't thinking about that - they were only worrying about their own re-election prospects. We're still doing business with them, but it's in spite of our better judgement, not because of it. And we need the money.... so yes - there are frustrations sometimes. But regardless of all that, we're all in this together, and on average it works out very well. We hope it continues to do so.