The View From Canada On NAFTA

[Vinca]

In light of the current cooked up controversy, a Canadian news outlet has published a piece describing how Canadians really feel about NAFTA.
From the Globe and Mail:

In the aftermath of Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's threats to "renegotiate" NAFTA — or pull out — the usual suspects have been activated to tell the world how wonderful the deal has been for Canada and the United States.

There is no doubt that the sector that devised the scheme in the first place and sold it to politicians have benefited greatly from this investors' rights agreement and its predecessor. The continent's largest corporations have greatly reduced regulatory impediments to their profits, radically lowered labour costs, gutted Canada's sovereign capacity to pass new environmental legislation and, in terms of investment restrictions, virtually erased the borders.

All of those corporate benefits, however, have been extremely bad for other aspects of Canada and for ordinary Canadians.

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

[leftofcool]

1. The Canadian People would love to get out of NAFTA

I can't speak for all of them, of course, just the ones I know who have been affected. Canadians are fortunate in other respects like their health care. When I found out that one of my Canadian friends was paying only 13.00 a month in supplemental health insurance just in case she wanted a private hospital room, I fell out of my chair. When I told her we paid 1100.00 per month for our health care, she dropped the phone and got sick.

Left of Cool