The UK makes up around 2.5% of Canada’s trade exports, and strangely enough, more than half of that is us exporting Gold to them… about 7.5 Billion dollars worth in 2021
I think we’ll be okay without a formal free trade agreement.
The UK is not our best option for that, our primary exports to the US are Petroleum and Cars/Car Parts, along with a ton of other raw exports. The UK doesn’t want that stuff from us because they aren’t a refiner/processor anymore. Even if they were, we aren’t going to be shipping fossil fuels there, because we don’t have a way to get it all the way across the country for a reasonable price. Similarly logging trees in BC and shipping wood products to them simply doesn’t make sense logistically. We may be able to foist some food off on them from the prairies, but that’s about it from a goods perspective.
We need to increase our trade with Japan, South Korea, Australia, India(unfortunately), along with the developing nations in Southeast Asia.
I shudder to think what country would want to actually buy asbestos. All I can think about is how much of a pain in the ass it is to clean up once used in construction.
It’s fucking amazing through. If it weren’t for the instant cancer thing it would be used in 1000 household products, electronics, automotive parts, airplanes, space shit, even clothes. There are a few places where the benefits still outweigh the risks though, also places like Russia and China where they don’t give a shit.
Fun fact, most countries still allow asbestos in a lot of products, including the States. Canada has an outright ban since 2018, which includes in concrete materials.
It’s a pain in the ass to deal with when we come across old asbestos concrete sewer pipes and have to dispose of them properly. It’s weird that a lot of other countries are still producing it.
Aluminum is a good example for why we shouldn’t trade with the US (soft wood as well and everything else) because Trump took office and blocked Aluminum imports from Canada so China could sell more
We import even less from the UK than we export to them.
Also, lack of a free trade agreement doesn’t mean we can’t trade with them at all, most of that trade will continue completely fine. It just means that on either side there can be additional tariffs on specific items if the country decides to do that.
A free trade agreement isn’t just about goods either. Professional mobility is a wonderful thing. Anyway, I digress. I hope we can work something out. Actually, I hope the UK reverses course and rejoins the EU, but that’s another conversation ;)
You’d think they’d have a better understanding of the obscene power that our dairy lobby is. The USA can’t even bargain through it I don’t know why thought they’d be able to.
The dairy lobby here is more powerful than the gun lobby in the US. It’s so powerful that both major parties fully support SM no matter what, and when leadership races happen candidates usually have to commit to maintaining SM during the process. It’s so powerful that all the shills that come up with arguments defending SM don’t even have to try - every argument they make is bullshit but it doesn’t matter because their victory is total.
You suggest SM is not a good idea but you don’t point out an alternative, beggaring the question.
Because I’ve had this discussion ad nauseum. The idea that there’s literally no alternative to SM for dairy only makes sense if you carefully ignore every other country.
Surely you don’t think the American super-capitalist market-forces brochure bait is better.
I don’t know what you think the Americans do, but what they actually do is heavily subsidize their dairy industry (tens of billions) which drives down costs of dairy and causes their industry to oversupply which means they have lots of cheap milk (some of it of dubious quality) to export . If a country simply opens their market to American dairy without restrictions, it often leads to local industry getting wiped out as a result.
I am not suggesting we open our market in this way, nor is any sane person. But the subsidy model is better than SM. It’s less heavy-handed, allows for new entrants into the market, and we can open our borders with caveats (tariffs on subsidized dairy, quality rules). Plenty of countries do it.
But that’s the reason we have it. The US would destroy our market. Is there a better way maybe but why should we subsidize the industry to create more dairy then we need?
But that’s the reason we have it. The US would destroy our market.
Tariffs take care of that. American dairy isn’t magic - it’s just subsidized. Dairy tariffs will prevent American dairy from destroying our market. We ourselves don’t have to subsidize it to the same extent the Americans do. Right now if you want to go into dairy farming your best option is to inherit a dairy farm. Barring that the barrier to entry for you to be able to legally milk a cow and sell the milk is absolutely massive. If you want to create higher quality milk? Well too bad it’ll all get pooled anyways. SM is the most heavy handed way to manage any market and it’s fundamentally unnecessary.
I agree that SM isn’t serving Canadians, and that we should have a system that protects domestic dairy farmers and other ‘staple’ producers as an essential part of our national food security infrastructure. A well regulated market is the answer here.
A bit of a nonsequiter but: Instead of trusting a precariously funded patchwork of volunteer organizations, we should have a national system for getting food to hungry Canadians. I think we should leverage the existing national food distribution oligopoly (Loblaw/Sobey) to accomplish this.
Unrelated, but I never really understood how the Eastern dairy lobbies were able to dominate politics so completely whereas the wheat board in the west was essentially destroyed
Harper, (the conservative born in Toronto) the vowed to kill the Wheat Board if it was last thing he did.
Some of the Prairie Conservatives bought into Harper’s bullshit. It makes it more difficult to be a competitive small time farmer when you can’t weather a bad season.
Supply Management. Dairy is not a free market in Canada. It is a cartel in which each producer gets a quota. The US complains about it constantly because they massively over-produce dairy, which drops the price of US dairy products, which they then want to export to Canada. It would give us consumers lower prices, but would probably kill our dairy indistry. Or at least that’s what we are told. I don’t have enough knowledge to say whether that story is valid.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !canada@lemmy.ca
The UK makes up around 2.5% of Canada’s trade exports, and strangely enough, more than half of that is us exporting Gold to them… about 7.5 Billion dollars worth in 2021
I think we’ll be okay without a formal free trade agreement.
Something tells me the opposition will jump on this to say how ‘nice hair guy’ is bad for Canada.
We want to replace the US as our go to trade partner, we are going to need to increase our trading with other countries
The UK is not our best option for that, our primary exports to the US are Petroleum and Cars/Car Parts, along with a ton of other raw exports. The UK doesn’t want that stuff from us because they aren’t a refiner/processor anymore. Even if they were, we aren’t going to be shipping fossil fuels there, because we don’t have a way to get it all the way across the country for a reasonable price. Similarly logging trees in BC and shipping wood products to them simply doesn’t make sense logistically. We may be able to foist some food off on them from the prairies, but that’s about it from a goods perspective.
We need to increase our trade with Japan, South Korea, Australia, India(unfortunately), along with the developing nations in Southeast Asia.
As an aside we shouldn’t be shipping unrefined oil products anywhere
But for raw trade we have potash, uranium, and asbestos
I shudder to think what country would want to actually buy asbestos. All I can think about is how much of a pain in the ass it is to clean up once used in construction.
It’s fucking amazing through. If it weren’t for the instant cancer thing it would be used in 1000 household products, electronics, automotive parts, airplanes, space shit, even clothes. There are a few places where the benefits still outweigh the risks though, also places like Russia and China where they don’t give a shit.
Mainly used in cement and cars today
Fun fact, most countries still allow asbestos in a lot of products, including the States. Canada has an outright ban since 2018, which includes in concrete materials.
It’s a pain in the ass to deal with when we come across old asbestos concrete sewer pipes and have to dispose of them properly. It’s weird that a lot of other countries are still producing it.
Raw Aluminum is way higher than anyone ever expects – cheap electricity means it’s refined here.
Sauce: https://oec.world/en/profile/country/can?yearlyTradeFlowSelector=flow0
Aluminum is a good example for why we shouldn’t trade with the US (soft wood as well and everything else) because Trump took office and blocked Aluminum imports from Canada so China could sell more
Trade goes both ways.
But also, it hurts the Brexit fans when they can’t bully their way through trade agreements. World is weird man ;)
We import even less from the UK than we export to them.
Also, lack of a free trade agreement doesn’t mean we can’t trade with them at all, most of that trade will continue completely fine. It just means that on either side there can be additional tariffs on specific items if the country decides to do that.
A free trade agreement isn’t just about goods either. Professional mobility is a wonderful thing. Anyway, I digress. I hope we can work something out. Actually, I hope the UK reverses course and rejoins the EU, but that’s another conversation ;)
Never going to happen. They well have less power then before.
And that would be unfortunate for them, but clearer heads may come to the conclusion that they would have more power internationally than they do now.
You’d think they’d have a better understanding of the obscene power that our dairy lobby is. The USA can’t even bargain through it I don’t know why thought they’d be able to.
The dairy lobby here is more powerful than the gun lobby in the US. It’s so powerful that both major parties fully support SM no matter what, and when leadership races happen candidates usually have to commit to maintaining SM during the process. It’s so powerful that all the shills that come up with arguments defending SM don’t even have to try - every argument they make is bullshit but it doesn’t matter because their victory is total.
You suggest SM is not a good idea but you don’t point out an alternative, beggaring the question.
Surely you don’t think the American super-capitalist market-forces brochure bait is better.
Because I’ve had this discussion ad nauseum. The idea that there’s literally no alternative to SM for dairy only makes sense if you carefully ignore every other country.
I don’t know what you think the Americans do, but what they actually do is heavily subsidize their dairy industry (tens of billions) which drives down costs of dairy and causes their industry to oversupply which means they have lots of cheap milk (some of it of dubious quality) to export . If a country simply opens their market to American dairy without restrictions, it often leads to local industry getting wiped out as a result.
I am not suggesting we open our market in this way, nor is any sane person. But the subsidy model is better than SM. It’s less heavy-handed, allows for new entrants into the market, and we can open our borders with caveats (tariffs on subsidized dairy, quality rules). Plenty of countries do it.
But that’s the reason we have it. The US would destroy our market. Is there a better way maybe but why should we subsidize the industry to create more dairy then we need?
Tariffs take care of that. American dairy isn’t magic - it’s just subsidized. Dairy tariffs will prevent American dairy from destroying our market. We ourselves don’t have to subsidize it to the same extent the Americans do. Right now if you want to go into dairy farming your best option is to inherit a dairy farm. Barring that the barrier to entry for you to be able to legally milk a cow and sell the milk is absolutely massive. If you want to create higher quality milk? Well too bad it’ll all get pooled anyways. SM is the most heavy handed way to manage any market and it’s fundamentally unnecessary.
I’m with you.
I agree that SM isn’t serving Canadians, and that we should have a system that protects domestic dairy farmers and other ‘staple’ producers as an essential part of our national food security infrastructure. A well regulated market is the answer here.
A bit of a nonsequiter but: Instead of trusting a precariously funded patchwork of volunteer organizations, we should have a national system for getting food to hungry Canadians. I think we should leverage the existing national food distribution oligopoly (Loblaw/Sobey) to accomplish this.
It’s so wonderful that the U.S. federal government has to subsidize the agricultural industry to make their free market system work. /s
Unrelated, but I never really understood how the Eastern dairy lobbies were able to dominate politics so completely whereas the wheat board in the west was essentially destroyed
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-wheat-board
Harper, (the conservative born in Toronto) the vowed to kill the Wheat Board if it was last thing he did.
Some of the Prairie Conservatives bought into Harper’s bullshit. It makes it more difficult to be a competitive small time farmer when you can’t weather a bad season.
Ok what the fuck is SM sadomasochism? Cause I read the article checked the thread and there are no definitions or context clues…
Now a large portion of the audience will read your comments coming with my flawed conclusions. And it’s at least somewhat funny
Define acronyms For Fucks Sake (FFS)
Supply Management. Dairy is not a free market in Canada. It is a cartel in which each producer gets a quota. The US complains about it constantly because they massively over-produce dairy, which drops the price of US dairy products, which they then want to export to Canada. It would give us consumers lower prices, but would probably kill our dairy indistry. Or at least that’s what we are told. I don’t have enough knowledge to say whether that story is valid.
Honestly thank you I’m starting to get old and cranky about the acronym issue.