John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot 50 years ago today, and in interesting element of all the coverage around this epochal event has been the Canadian media stories recalling how the U.S. president interfered in Canadian politics and helped knock Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker out of power and bring in Liberal Lester B. Pearson.
I heard lots about this on CBC radio in the last couple of days and the subject once again highlighted our nation’s incredible vulnerability to the U.S. and its whims. (Diefenbaker was the main culprit in his loss of power, but JFK and Pearson conspired to give him a good shove out of the Prime Minister’s office – an unprecedented interference in Canadian politics.)
Read Also
Determining tariff compensation will be difficult but necessary
Prime minister Mark Carney says his government will support canola farmers, yet estimating the loss and paying compensation in an equitable fashion will be no easy task, but it can be done.
This theme is jumping out at me right now as I am going through my audio recordings of the Manitoba Beef Producers farmer meeting from last Friday night in Carberry and a number of people are talking about how important it is to do everything possible to reduce Canada’s reliance on the U.S. as dominant market for our beef. Beef Producers general manager Cam Dahl highlighted the proposed free trade deal with Europe, free trade talks with Japan and the Trans Pacific Partnership talks with a plethora of Pacific rim nations as mechanisms by which Prairie producers can reduce their unique vulnerability to U.S. actions.
“If we can reduce that percentage a little bit, things like mandatory Country of Origin Labelling won’t hurt as much,” said Dahl.
COOL and the U.S. reaction to BSE have made the Canadian cattle industry extremely wary of trusting the U.S. market. Hog farmers know all about that sentiment. They have been badly battered by protectionist actions like COOL and a host of other trade harassments engineered by a few farm groups with political sway in the U.S. Most of these harassments and constraints disappear after a few years of multi-million dollar litigation and struggle, but that kind of harassment has a real economic cost – especially if your industry is built upon the assumption of free and fair access to the U.S. as a number one (in the case of Prairie pork) or number two (in the case of Canadian beef) market.
Re-engineering the industry to serve a much-wider world market is key to cutting that terrible reliance upon the U.S. and a central strategic objective of both industries, which is why both industries have aggressive overseas marketing organizations.
The free trade deal with Europe seems like a natural way to reduce the reliance on the U.S.
Ditto more access to Japan and the rest of the Pacific rim.
Dahl noted that the U.S. will always be Canadian beef’s number two market – Canada is number one – but that “diversifying” foreign markets reduces the damage U.S. actions will mean to Prairie farmers.
The U.S.-Canada relationship is fraught with complexity, from the separation of populations after the American Revolution right up to today. Generally in Canadian culture right-wingers are assumed to love the U.S. and left-wingers assumed to despise it. But the liberal JFK-LBPearson friendship highlights the fact that it’s not such a simple situation, and the steady efforts of right-wingers like the present Conservative government and cattle farmer groups to break Canada’s reliance on the U.S. shows that sometimes promotion of Canada’s economic independence comes from an unexpected direction.
