Is the door to the Airbus A310 wide enough? Is it high enough? Did that inflated head of perfect hair find an easier way to get on the airplane for the trip back to Canada from Brussels? You could see the glee and the pride when he said at the announcement that it “is not just a good deal, it is an excellent deal.” Only time will determine the truth of that statement but you could see that he was treating it as his legacy.
The media are calling this the Hair’s signature move as Prime Minister. It seems to lack the flair of Pierre Trudeau’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the novelty of Brian Mulroney’s attempt at a free trade deal with the United States but in the long term these trading arrangements are starting to fall in place around the world. As the kids say, you have to be there or be square. Trade is the way.
What is embarrassing is that the flood of hype is coming not from the joint announcement in Brussels, nor from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development but from the Prime Minister’s Office. Everything has the Hair’s DNA on it.
What Canadians are not getting is facts. There are none. Nobody can forecast the number of jobs this deal might or might not create. Nobody can forecast the net worth of the deal. Sure, billions can be bandied but that possibility is years from now and more can go wrong than right in those years.
We can alarm the cheese processors and scare the makers of Eau de Welland Canal but the smart ones will see opportunity. It will also demand that they keep improving the quality of their product. They could even reach a point where they can compete.
And if you are worried about Canadians losing on this deal, you might be needlessly pessimistic. We have already had the guts ripped out of our manufacturing by the Americans and their right to work states. There is little more that the Europeans can do to us in that regard.
What we can expect now is for the Hair to start to measure what is left for him to accomplish. The bravado that he has used to-date with Justin Trudeau is just that. The few Canadians who saw Trudeau’s speech on Friday in response to the Throne Speech will agree that the Hair cannot meet the Liberal challenger head to head. What are the Hair’s options now?
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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