With parliament taking spring break from Senate questions and questionable election changes, the Hair and the hairdresser are holidaying in South Korea. It is a welcome respite for the Hair and he is celebrating the occasion by signing a lopsided trade agreement with the South Koreans. It is not the best deal that the Hair could have got but the best on the trading block this week.
After the Hair’s disappointing experience in Brussels’ with the European Community on his last trip, he might have looked silly if he only signed another agreement to study the question of free trade. The Europeans have already figured out that they need to sign with the Americans before bothering with the Canadians.
As South Korea had already signed a trade pact with the United States two years ago, there were only crumbs left on the table for Canada. When Canada has to give up its small tariffs on Hyundai and Kia automobiles within some three years but the Koreans have about 13 years to reduce their tariffs on pork products, you wonder what the point is to the Hair’s free trade deals.
The problem is that while there is general agreement that the world has to move towards freer trade, why does Canada always have to get shafted? Maybe it started when Brian Mulroney pulled Canada’s professionals away from the table with the Americans and replaced them with politicians during the North American free trade negotiations, the stage was set. Canada has become the world’s free trade patsy.
It is like the new bridge to the U.S. at Detroit. The busiest port of entry for Canadian goods to the U.S. and Canada has to pay for both sides of the damn bridge. And then Obama’s budget goes to Congress forgetting to add the money for the customs plaza on the Detroit side. That is just another insult.
But the Hair is reaping the soured relations with the rest of the world. The incompetence and perpetual pandering for votes of Conservative politicians has driven Canada’s relations with the rest of the world into the sewer. Canada cannot even win votes to put the country back on the Security Council where it served so nobly in the past.
Meanwhile, at home, the Hair’s bitumen and resource-based economic strategies are destroying the country’s manufacturing base and dividing Canadians. Here we have such a beautiful country and he wants to ship bitumen to countries willing to destroy the world environment. The Hair has much to answer for and so does that guy Harper who wears the Hair.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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