bit more on 'Dollarisation' and 'Euroisation'... ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, October 27, 2000 8:51 AM Subject: [STOPNATO.ORG.UK] BG: US and Canada as ONE!!!! STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK In a message dated 23/10/00 14:28:30 Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << Subj: san: Economic view: US, Canada as one Date: 23/10/00 14:28:30 Pacific Daylight Time From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bill Fitzpatrick) Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (san) hi, this ran today on the front page of the boston globe. in solidarity, bill. ---------------------------------------- Economic view: US, Canada as one By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff, 10/23/2000 ONTREAL - The US-Canada border, with its inspection posts and legions of customs and immigration police enforcing a profusion of rules and restrictions, runs 3,987 miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a scratch across the heart of the richest two-nation trading relationship the world has ever known. Goods and services - everything from jet engines to fish sticks, computer chips to hydroelectricity - pour across this line at an almost unimaginable rate of more than $45 million an hour, $1.1 billion a day, $434 billion a year. The province of Ontario alone exports more to the United States than does Japan. The torrent of trade has become so prodigious that many analysts are convinced it will soon wipe away the border itself. Notions once dismissed as the paranoid fantasies of Canadian ultranationalists - an end to border controls, the US dollar as common currency, the undercutting of Canada's tax codes and cherished social policies to align with those of the superpower next door - are now bandied about as the way of the future in corporate strategy sessions and policy thinkfests. The subject of full economic union is still taboo in Ottawa and Washington but is moving toward mainstream thought in Toronto, New York, Montreal, Boston, and other centers where business takes precedence over politics. And in the US-Canada relationship, the business view nearly always triumphs. Here is Brian Mulroney, Canada's former prime minister and today a powerful corporate mover and shaker whose words reflect boardroom thinking on both sides: ''I certainly support getting rid of all this stuff at the border, which inhibit progress and inhibit the free movement of goods, services, and people,'' he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation the other day. Recent years have seen such a profound blending of the two economies that many US-Canada watchers are convinced that formal divides between the two countries will vanish within a decade or two, the border becoming just a mark on the map - with not so much as a speed bump to stand sentinel at what once seemed the front line of nationhood. ''We seem headed toward economic integration,'' said Louis Balthazar, a senior Canadian political scientist teaching as a Fulbright scholar at Bridgewater State College. ''I would bet on at least the formation of a customs union ... in which Canada surrenders part of its sovereignty.'' Most Americans would barely notice such a momentous change, but Canadians are only too keenly aware that their prosperous but culturally vulnerable country is fast becoming just the northern branch of America Inc. ''The Americanization of our economy has entered a disturbing new reality,'' wrote Canadian historian Peter C. Newman in a recent article for Maclean's magazine. ''[Canada is] well on the way to becoming an economic colony of the Americans ... self-governing, but indentured to the Yankee dollar.'' Now that the Cold War is over and the old ''special relationship'' between Washington and Ottawa starts to fade, with Canada coolly viewed by US policy makers as just another foreign country, there is increasingly serious talk of formal economic integration, along lines similar to the European Union. The countries would keep separate flags and political systems, but the physical barriers would be reduced to highway signs announcing a switch of jurisdiction, like the ones demarcating Vermont and Massachusetts. And for all the talk of a ''new partnership,'' no one doubts that Washington, not Ottawa, would call the important shots in such a union. French Quebecers, the nation's most boisterously pro-American population, support open borders and, more radically, adoption of the US dollar. ''The border has become just a bother,'' said Louise Beaudoin, Quebec's minister for international relations. ''Our trade with New England is up 100 percent in 10 years, while trade with Ontario is up only 12 percent,'' she said. ''We need to be thinking north-south, not east-west along the old lines. ... People and goods should be moving just as freely between Montreal and Boston as between Montreal and Toronto.'' But the concept is potential political dynamite in both countries. Canadians, far more sensitive to the issue, fear that erasing the border will obliterate their national identity, making the country little more than an oversized ''51st state'' with perhaps a few traditions - Parliament, the Mounties, the Maple Leaf symbol - to distinguish it from the behemoth below. The fear among Americans, raised mainly by conservatives seeking a clampdown, is that throwing open the border will make the United States more vulnerable to terrorists and illegal immigrants. But the beating of drums for economic merger - by corporate honchos, think tank researchers, trade consultants, and ''working groups'' at international conferences - is building quietly, some think inexorably. Proponents are using exactly the sort of stealth strategy that spawned the 1989 US-Canada Free Trade Agreement and, five years later, the North American Free Trade Agreement - both decried at first as outlandish, politically impossible concepts. Typical was last year's report by the C.D. Howe Institute, a Toronto think tank that tends to reflect the views of Canada's financial leaders, urging that Canada adopt a ''common currency'' with the United States - read, the American greenback. There was an explosion of outrage, and Canadian politicians predictably huffed that Canada will never surrender the ''loonie,'' as the Canadian dollar is called after the loon on the one-dollar coin. But the proposal is now ''out there,'' and draws scant notice when the pros and cons are hoisted by economists or businessfolk. ''It's policy making by trial balloon,'' said Maude Barlow, chairwoman of the Council of Canadians, a nationalist group opposed to greater integration. ''The corporations and the think tanks and the so-called `working groups' float these notions to see how much we scream in horror,'' she said. ''After a while, the screaming fades. And the trial balloons become official policy.'' Indeed, growing numbers of Canadian firms, including Nortel Networks - the Ontario-based flagship of the country's high-tech industry - already keep their books in US dollars. Economic integration seems to be the marching order for the Western world. Across the Atlantic, 15 western European democracies have coalesced into economic union, effectively erasing national borders across much of the continent. South American countries are clamoring for similar partnerships. For English Canadians, absorption by the United States is the oldest nightmare. Many are descendants of loyalists who fled north after the American Revolution. ''Eliminating the border entails more than just an unimpeded flow of goods,'' said James Laxer, political scientist at Ontario's York University. ''Would Canada, with its tradition of strict gun control, end up importing the Second Amendment?'' Canadian politicians are especially reluctant to address the issue as national elections draw near. Prime Minister Jean Chretien swears Canada will never abandon border controls or join a customs union with the United States. Of course, for much of his political career, he swore to oppose free trade with the United States - but his first act upon gaining the top office was signing the NAFTA accord. South of the border, Canadian officials pipe a different tune. The country's most influential diplomat, Raymond Chretien - nephew of the prime minister and ambassador to the United States until his transfer to Paris last month - has spoken urgently of the need to bring the US-Canada economies into perfect harmony. A new study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank in Washington, flatly predicts Canada will be swept into the US economic embrace. There are 30 million Canadians, 270 million US citizens. The imbalance is old, but never before, surveys suggest, have Canadians felt so overwhelmed by their neighbor. One recent broad-based poll found that 32 percent of Canadians flatly predict their nation will be swallowed by the United States within 25 years. ''Canadians have deeply ambiguous feelings toward the border,'' said political scientist Balthazar. ''It's the fount of prosperity, but also the source of great national anxiety. ''Canadians know in their hearts that Americans will always be Americans, the envy of the world,'' he said. ''But who will Canadians be?'' This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 10/23/2000. >> ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Taking Care of Business is always a snap when you shop with the world's largest seller of office products. From pencils to PDAs, Office Depot has what you're looking for, plus FREE delivery on all orders over $50. Click here to start saving: http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/Office_Depot
