Reply #123: This is what I nabbed from the Globe and Mail today at lunch [View All]

[sueragingroz]

I couldn't post it here when I read it because DU and other such sites are blocked..

But better late than never I suppose:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080228.wnaftaottawasb28/BNStory/Front

Relevant excerpts:

OTTAWA — Americans' privileged access to Canada's massive oil and gas reserves could be disrupted if Washington cancels the NAFTA accord as Democratic presidential candidates threaten, Canadian Trade Minister David Emerson warned yesterday.

"There's no doubt if NAFTA were to be reopened we would want to have our list of priorities," he said.

"Knowledgeable observers would have to take note of the fact that we are the largest supplier of energy to the United States, and NAFTA has been kind of a foundation of integrating the North American energy market," Mr. Emerson said.

"When people get below the rhetoric and start picking away at the details, you are going to find that it's not such a slam-dunk proposition to go from the rhetoric to a meaningful improvement," he said.

But Mr. Obama's rhetoric on the subject may be just that, CTV News reported last night. Citing Canadian sources, the network said that a senior member of Mr. Obama's campaign team called Canada's U.S. ambassador, Michael Wilson, within the past month, warning him that Mr. Obama would be taking some "heavy swings" at NAFTA in the campaign.

"Don't worry, ... it's just campaign rhetoric, ... it's not serious," CTV reported the campaign official as saying.

He scoffed at Democratic suggestions that they want to toughen labour and environmental provisions, saying: "I don't think the United States has got anything to teach Canada about labour and the environment."

It's far from certain that tearing up NAFTA would leave Canada without any trade deal with the U.S. That's because its predecessor, the Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement (FTA) of 1988, was suspended, not cancelled, when NAFTA came into force and it was what delivered the benefits of free trade to the two nations.

"My understanding is that abrogation of the NAFTA would automatically trigger reversion to the FTA," Michael Hart, a trade expert at Carleton University who helped negotiate the original Canada-U.S. free-trade deal, said.

"In U.S. law, there is both a NAFTA Implementation Act and an FTA Implementation Act. Congress would need to revoke the first, which would then reactivate the second," Mr. Hart said.

Gordon Ritchie, an architect of the Canada-U.S. FTA, said Canada would be in a good position to weather things if the free-trade arrangements fell apart because the two economies have become much more integrated since 1992. Also, since then, multilateral trade rules have cut global tariffs and established a World Trade Organization system to arbitrate disputes that's no worse than the NAFTA mechanism, he said.

"At the end of the day, the Americans would be foolish to embark on this course, but if they did, we could deal with it just fine," Mr. Ritchie said. "It wouldn't be the end of the world."

and it goes on from there.

Canada is the repository for the fresh water and the oil (not to mention the talent) that America will need in the upcoming decades.

Unless Americans want to invade, they will have to play ball. It's really that simple.