Connecting Dots on the Canada-EU Trade Agreement

Reporting of Canadian political news has become very superficial. Today’s columnists and pundits are not reporting facts but rather providing their observations and opinions. In this way, political reporting has become a jocular exercise. Canadians hear only who is carrying the ball at any one time and how much ground was gained or lost on each play.

There is no true analysis of what is happening on the playing field, or how the Canadian game compares in relation to world politics and economics. Where is the context in the cut-and-thrust stories of the Senate, government expenditures, or daily Question Period? Is anyone connecting the dots? Is anyone pulling out the whiteboard to explain the greater significance of Canada’s performance, direction and place vis-à-vis our global standings?  We get glimpses often with OECD reports, or comments coming from G8 meetings. However, we are largely left to our own devices to reason out the significance of any one play.

Recently there’s been a spectacular play that has not yet had its deserved analysis. In fact, it was barely noticed in the media, buried under the headlines of the Duffy and Ford sideshows. The Canada – European Union trade agreement is a blockbuster deal for our country’s economy. It is a calculated move to untie Canada’s economic fate to that of the United States by opening up our trading markets elsewhere. Here are a few dots that By George has connected to help assess the importance of the Canada-EU trade agreement.

In a Financial Post interview this past weekend, political commentator Mark Steyn was asked about the description of the US in his book After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, as the “brokiest broke of all the brokiest countries in the world.” Here’s Steyn’s insight:

       On its present trajectory, America is looking at $20-trillion debt by the time this president leaves office, just the federal debt. That will mean the 44th president has run up more debt than the previous 43 presidents combined. It was $10-trillion when he took office. No one has ever spent that much in the history of the planet. And he has nothing to show for it. And the question then becomes, is serious political course correction possible in the United States? And I think the answer to that is very difficult. The question then is whether the rest of the developed world sits back and watches America drag everybody else over the cliff, or whether they start making plans, as Australia and certain other countries are doing, for the post-American world? The post-Second World War American order is over. We didn’t ask for it. The Americans did this to us; we didn’t do it to them. But, you know, it’s a new world out there and we have to look for other partners.

Let’s juxtapose this with recent commentary from the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters  Association, in responding to the news of the Canada-EU trade agreement. In a release dated October 13th, CMEA referred to the deal as an exceptional one and (for Canadians described it in sports-like terms to highlight the significance.)

       “This is the Wayne Gretzky of trade deals,” says CME President and CEO Jayson Myers, during the official signing of the deal in Belgium. “This landmark agreement gives Canada a competitive advantage over other leading nations around the globe, providing us with preferential access to the world’s largest economy. CETA is our economic power play in the global arena.”

The CMEA release stated: With unparalleled access to a market of 500 million people, generating approximately $17 trillion in economic activity a year, Canada is strategically positioned to be a global economic powerhouse as the only G8 nation to have access to the world’s two largest markets.

Here is the full press release:  Canada’s economic power play in the global arena

However, Canadians and Canadian business may well have missed the significance of this news and how it positions Canada in a post-America world. In connecting the dots, though, most will realize that the Federal Government got this play right. It was a spectacular play – in football terms “a touchdown.” Our question is, “Why was it not given its proper place in the nightly news or on the front pages of the weekend papers?” It’s something we must ask those providing play-by-play on how Duffy and Ford are stumbling and fumbling the ball.