Well, my kids have been sequentially sick over the past 10 days, and finally I’ve got it too. So rather than being at the Manitoba Special Crops Symposium today I’m lying on the couch feeling crappy.
This sad situation, however, gives me a chance to think about two things that have been recently preoccupying me, but about which I haven’t had a chance to fulminate. They are:
1) The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee;
2) Why the Americans will always be trade cheats.
First, about the glorious and grand:
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Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee is a truly epochal event, a moving year-long tribute to a woman who has exemplified duty and commitment for 60 years across a stunning panoply of different conditions, from the post-war decolonizing period, through years of Commonwealth dissipation, through the erosion of the strength and self-confidence of the mother country and the drifting of the dominions into the orbit of the United States and the spinning of the other colonies into 100 different directions, to a renewed confidence at the old core of England, a bolstered sense of self within the ascendant dominions, and a robust rise of many former Imperial possessions into strong nations that are leading the globe. The children of the old empire – Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. etc. etc. – are all doing pretty well and are the envy of most of the rest of the planet. Their grandmother must be proud.
The stained glass window above was unveiled in Canada’s Senate yesterday as a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee, and it shows both our present Queen and her great-great-grandmother, Victoria, who also reigned long enough to celebrate a diamond jubilee. See more about this at the Governor General’s website here. Last night, as I drove home from dropping off a cousin downtown, I was joyfully stunned when I drove down Winnipeg’s Memorial Boulevard towards the provincial legislature and saw the entire front of the enormous structure bathed in a rich, regal purple light, and the Queen’s crest glowing from the dome. A truly fitting tribute and whoever pulled off that technical feat deserves one of the jubilee medals they’re giving out. Go see more about it here. Good for the Manitoba government to recognize this historic occasion so fittingly.
Even the Americans, those wayward, prodigal sons of the empire, are celebrating, and really, then tend to get into these things bigtime. After all, it’s a family thing even if they wandered off in their own bizarro direction in 1776. I’m a big fan of the United States and am a continentalist when it comes to the question of how Canada should position itself vis a vis the U.S. and the world. We not only share  the continent with them, but are truly family, with much of our core, founding population actually being Americans who fled the outrage of the revolution. So we might as well get along, integrate economically and continue to operate as the dominant economic force in the world. And it’s not bad that they are able to defend us and that we don’t have to live with any fear of invasion – which is a historically rare situation for any people.
But while I trust their good will towards us generally, they can never be trusted when it comes to trade, not because they deliberately want to cheat, but they actually can’t handle the fact that other people – like us – might occasionally do things better than them.
This is Thing #2 I’ve recently been thinking about. How many freakin’ trade disputes with the U.S. have I covered in the past 17.3 years here at the Western Producer? Canadian pigs, wheat and beef have all been hit – sometimes a number of times – by U.S. blockages that generally seem unjustified. It’s easy to be cynical and say it’s just cheap electoral politics in the U.S., with no downside for a U.S. politician currying local favour by beating up on those sneaky Canadians. And no doubt they sometimes have small points that have some justification. (We demand free trade in pigs, beef and wheat exports, but build a Berlin Wall against U.S. imports of supply-managed commodities and had a CWB system that complicated the continental market.)
But it was while watching U.S. president Barack Obama’s State of the Union address a couple of weeks ago that the fundamental problem in trading with the U.S. was made crystal clear to me: they truly believe they will always be the best at whatever they do, and if we somehow seem to do something better, we must be cheating.
Here are a few of Obama’s words from the speech, which I just rewatched courtesy of my PVR:
“Our workers are the most productive on earth, and if the playing field is level, I promise you, America will always win!”
This was about manufacturing trade, but the attitude definitely applies to agricultural trade too. Just think of those words for a moment: “. . . if the playing field is level, I promise you, America will always win.!”
That’s pretty much poison as far as free trade and fair competition is concerned. In a free and fair competition, in trade as well as sports, you don’t always win. With a level playing field, you get to win if you play better. But you don’t always win. Having a good shot at winning is what makes it worth playing, but it’s obviously ridiculous to suggest you will always win every fair contest with every other nation on earth.
Of course this comes from chest-thumping political bravado that was being used to buck-up American spirits after a brutalizing continuing recession, but I really think it does sum up the attitude rather well. Many of Americans I have known just don’t seem to ever be able to acknowledge that another country, another people could somehow do something better than them – unless they are cheating and preventing Americans from getting a fair shot.
I found this with the trade actions launched by the U.S. against Canadian hog exports. Some Americans, including a U.S.-based but non-American economist I interviewed a couple of times, could not accept that Manitoba farmers could possibly produce better, healthier piglets than American farmers. The fact that Canadian hog and weanling exports were increasing, while U.S. production was lagging, was de facto proof to many Americans that Canada must be cheating somehow, because we were doing better than them. If Americans can’t lose a fair competition, then our success must be proof of nefarious dealings on our side.
Obama got a standing ovation for those words – I think even the Republicans applauded them – Â so it’s clearly something that they want to believe. And because they’re big and powerful, compared to us, they’ll always have the chance to try to force reality to fit their prejudices, to our detriment.
I like to think that we in the non-revolutionary side of the anglosphere have a healthier view of fair play and competition: if we play by the Marquess of Queensbury’s rules, we’ve got as good a shot as anyone of winning. If we work harder, and use our skills, we could easily win. So let’s try. That’s a more British approach and fitting of our fundamental nature. And so even when the other side cheats, we hope we get a better referee the next time, and don’t claim the game itself must be rigged. And we don’t claim every time we lose that the other guys must have cheated, although we didn’t actually see them do anything wrong.
So let’s celebrate the jubilee year and revel in this historic time, because we have earned the right to feel good about how we’ve developed and how far we have come, and there will be lots of times ahead when we’re feeling less grand and glorious and will be beset by struggles and woes as we deal with a real world in which we don’t always win. Fortunately, we never thought we would.
