Harper’s free trade efforts need more thought
By Denzil Doyle
Prime Minister Harper is to be congratulated for his efforts to diversify Canada’s international trade so that we are less dependent on the U.S.
The cornerstone of his initiative is the signing of free trade agreements with as many countries as possible around the world. His advisors have obviously alerted him about what would happen to Canada if the U.S. ever becomes energy self-sufficient and does not need our oil, whether it be clean or dirty. They have also likely reminded him that Obama is a protectionist who has goofy ideas of how economies really work. (He obviously studied at the McGuinty School of Economics and majored in windmills and solar panels.)
Harper’s efforts, and the environment in which he is operating, can be looked upon as those of a mother bird who leaves the nest every morning in search of food for the baby birds. However, when he returns he finds that the baby birds have been defecating in the nest all day and that he really doesn’t have anything nice to show to the other big birds with whom he has been cavorting. The baby birds are fighting over things like how many extra worms they should get because they have pipelines running through their corner of the nest, or some of them want to throw their worms overboard and replace them with windmills and solar panels.
