Renegotiating NAFTA could be bad for our access to Canadian Oil

[dkf]

I didn't realize that Canadians were obligated to let the US have access to their oil & gas under NAFTA. Are we willing to let go of this source of stable and reliable energy in order to save jobs? Are American jobs going to the Canadians anyway or are they going to China/Asia? I'm sooo confused.

This is from the Canadian article:

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada is an energy "superpower." But NAFTA virtually guaranteed that the U.S. would be the beneficiary of our energy, and it unleashed a massive increase in energy exports to the U.S.

Canada now exports 63 per cent of the oil it produces and 56 per cent of its natural gas to the U.S. And because of NAFTA's proportionality clause, Canada is legally obliged to continue exporting the same proportion of our oil and gas forever even if we face a shortage.

Next up is our water. The U.S. is already officially into its supply problems and it will, over the next 20 years, become a catastrophic crisis, outpacing even their predicted energy crisis.

NAFTA defines water as a good — meaning that, as soon as any provincial government signs a contract to export bulk water to the U.S. (by river diversion or tanker), nothing can stop further exports.

All of this, and for what? Allegedly, it was for guaranteed, predictable access to the U.S. market. But, of course, as the softwood lumber saga proved, there is no such thing. When its history is written, NAFTA could rightly be described as the worst agreement ever signed by a Canadian government."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080305.wcomment0306/BNStory/Front/home

[rockymountaindem]

1. Renegotiation with Canada would be a mistake

Renegotiation with Mexico might be another story.

[ingac70]

2. I don't mind free trade with Canada...

it's Mexico that needs to be chucked from the equation until the gov't there does things to improve the standard of living of its citizens.

[DrFunkenstein]

3. Does Canada Have Problems With Labor and Environmental Compliance?

Somehow I doubt this will be a problem. The problem is with all those factories that moved to Monterrey across the border.

[dkf]

5. Sounds like NAFTA was used to gut Canadian social programs.

Same link as OP:

"But even if NAFTA were responsible for increased trade, Canadian workers have paid a huge price. Throughout the 1990s, federal governments trumpeted the need to be "competitive" under NAFTA as an excuse to implement some of the most Draconian rollbacks of Canadian social programs ever undertaken. In the name of "labour flexibility," Paul Martin implemented drastic changes to EI eligibility, and repealed the Canada Assistance Plan, freeing the provinces to gut their welfare programs."

[Vincardog]

4. Canada is the red herring to distract us from the disaster that flat earth faux "free trade" has

been for the American Worker. The rich ass ed capitalist pigs love it still.

[dkf]

6. So why are we going on about NAFTA? Is it mostly about Mexico?

I don't understand.

[MojoMojoMojo]

7. Good question ,China trade is the real problem

I would like to see figures, because I would guess most of the lost US jobs have been replaced by Chinese manufacturing not Mexico or Canada.
BTW we get oil from Mexico as well.

[MojoMojoMojo]

8. Also if there are 13 million immigrant laborers in the US

They probably represent more jobs than the US has exported to Mexico because of NAFTA.
Im not bashing illegals ,just thinking about Nafta.
Im just guessing because Im too lazy to research right now.

[dkf]

9. Maybe we are creating jobs, but only jobs that are so low paying that

you can't even hire people legally.

[dkf]

12. I wonder if Mexico is obligated to provide oil too.

I hate the fact that we are so dependent on oil. We so need massive investment in solar energy and I would like to see each household in America generating their own energy supply. I wish Obama would focus on this. It is something Dems and Repubs could support.

[MojoMojoMojo]

17. Hillary Green Jobs Energy Amendment

http://www.senate.gov/~clinton/news/statements/record.cfm?id=276854

[Vincardog]

10. NAFTA is short hand for all the failed neoConservative flat earth free from regulation

policies that the radical right has been pushing for the last 20 years. The last time they had this much unregulated power resulted in the Great Depression. The future looks at least that dark now. That is why some of us are fighting so hard against the GOP and the DLC as well.

They are two sides of the same coin.

Get it?

[dkf]

13. Actually, I would really apprecate a run down on NAFTA

I know that as a Dem I'm supposed to be against it. I'd like some nice solid reasons why please.

And when you talk about being free from regulations, are you talking about within the US or abroad?

[Vincardog]

14. NAFTA and all the "Free Trade" agreements subjugate the Rights

of people to the benefits of MONEY. NAFTA was sold to us as a way to raise ?Mexican wages and help create a Mexican middle class that would buy our products and grow the demand for American made goods.
It was supposed to include provisions that guaranteed the Mexican manufacturers met the same environmental standards as their US counterparts.

Instead it opened the Mexican markets to subsidized US exports of Grain. The Mexican farmers could not compete with subsidized American agribusiness and went to town looking for work. The jobs available paid pennies an hour and offered no personal or environmental protections. The workers in an attempt to feed their families snuck across our border to work at BP or Con Agra or the California produce fields.

They drove the wages of working people in the USA down. This benefited the rich people who wanted to have house labor that they could exploit because they were "illegal" and had no labor or human protection.

Meanwhile the jobs that were in Mexico fled to the Philippines because the Mexicans were demanding 25 cents an hour. Then the jobs went to India. When the Indians could not keep up with the demand the jobs went to China.

All the benefits flow to the Rich "Owners" all the pain is passed to the workers.

It is unrestrained free capitalism it has failed before and it is failing now.

[Canuckistanian]

11. Ding, ding, ding

Yup, that's what we want.

We wantses our oil, yes we do. Nasty, tricksy Americans take it away!

Precioussss......

[Leopolds Ghost]

15. GOOD. Extraction of Oil from the Canadian Tar Sands would be Incredibly Destructive

Because that is the most anti-environmental move America could possibly make.

And illustrates EXACTLY what the evils of "free trade" (re: treating the
entire globe as a duty-free zone protected by the pro-corporate US under
international law, and subverting local law and removing all corporate
tarriffs and taxes locally and internationally).

Check out the National Geographic article on the sheer volume (percentage-wise)
of Natural Gas that would have to be extracted from ANWR (yes, ANWR, and
the Mackenzie Delta in Canada, an even more environmentally sensitive
area) and BURNED in order to merely PROCESS the tar sands into gasoline,
creating TWICE The greenhouse gas output per gallon for the DOUBLED PRICE
output of VALUE-ADDED (refined from TAR) domestic North American gasoline.

Venezuela's oil is cheaper and easier to refine.

AND DOESN'T INVOLVE STRIP-MINING AN AREA OF THE ARTIC THE SIZE OF NORTH
DAKOTA, REMOVING THE TOP 6 FEET OF SOIL AND TURNING THE TAIGA OF ALBERTA
INTO A GIANT QUARRY. USING NATURAL GAS BURNOFF EXTRACTED FROM ANWAR IN A
TRANS-ALASKAN PIPELINE OPENING UP VAST WILDERNESS TO HARD-ROCK MINING, AND
DIVERTED FROM HEATING AMERICAN HOMES.

(on edit -- apologize for the all-caps but a lot of people don't
realize this -- even Kunstler doesn't emphasize it enough)

We're talking "Blade Runner" in the Arctic here. For real.

Preventing a Tar-sands boondoggle is a perfect argument against free trade. :hi:

Especially when a Saudi Arabia of below-ground hard-rock coal mine
reserves are under nearby Montana, and the Governor there has a plan
to create clean coal plants that would pump all the CO2 into carbon sinks
under the earth. The nice thing about coal is that it is dirty,
but easier to clean up than automobile exhaust which entails vast and
wasteful consumption of materials to manufacture 1-2 billion cars for
every person... a coal plant can power an electrified public transit
system efficiently in a controllable emissions fashion.

[dkf]

16. Venezuela not happy with us. They are very willing to blackmail us

over oil.

I think depending on them would be stupid indeed.

[Vincardog]

18. And we have started no less that 2 coups to overthrow Chavez because he actually is working to

benefit the working and poor in his own country. How dare he have their interests above ours?

What is funny is when our Right Wing Nutz rail against him for acting as a Democratic leader should.