The time has come for Canadians to become serious about our viability as a nation.
America is turning its back on participation in the world free trading of goods and services. Both Biden and Trump look on our nation fundamentally as a provider of raw materials — principally crude petroleum, motor vehicle and machinery parts, and plastics.
These basic supplies, along with their upcoming demand for adding control of our water resources to their priority list, will dominate the looming renewal negotiations of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
Canada is firmly attached to the American bosom. Currently, 78 per cent ($440 billion USD) of our goods and services exports go to the USA. (China ranks second at 4 per cent). And while we are the American’s largest export market at $308 billion USD, this accounts for only about 10 per cent of their global exports ($3 trillion USD). Unfortunately for the current USA economy, the US imports $1 trillion ISD more than it exports. The Yanks will be focusing on us to help balance their books in Making America Great Again.
But that is not our most serious existential issue. Maintaining our sovereignty over the Northwest Passage and Arctic islands is much more serious. For too long, we have persistently claimed we have three sea boundaries and that singing Stan Rogers’s1981 sea shanty Northwest Passage gives us inherent title to the arctic archipelago.
Canada classifies the waters of the Northwest Passage as internal waters of our country in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea — thus giving us the right to regulate and control transit through these waters. Other countries, and especially the USA, insist that the Passage is an international waterway and the islands are not part of Canada. Given the drying up of the Panama Canal, the retreating arctic ice makes the navigable NorthWest Passage a subject of global importance and attraction.
Tragically, our government is in a terrible position to militarily defend our nation or our boundaries. In common with most Western countries over the past 40 years, we have largely disarmed our military. The Canadian public has enthusiastically taken advantage of this ‘peace dividend’ to create our socialized services society.
Nowhere is this more starkly evident than in directly defending our homeland. In 1957, at the height of the Cold War, Canada and the USA made a pact to integrate our air defences under NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). In 2006, maritime defence was added to the agreement.
NORAD spending figures are not publicly available from the USA, but Defence Research and Development Canada conducted an analysis of the “defence burden”. They report that the U.S. shoulders about 98 per cent of the North American defence burden but receives about 64 per cent of the benefits. Meanwhile Canada contributes about two per cent of the burden and enjoys 36 per cent of the benefits. Balancing the books would then require tripling our commitment to match the benefits – or risk forfeiting ownership of our north to the USA.
In essence, if Trump is successful, or Biden wakes up, the United States of American might only renew the USMCA if we surrender the Northwest Passage and ownership of the arctic islands. The Art of the Deal. Who should negotiate for Canada?
