President Donald Trump has done more to revitalize discussion on an independent Canadian economic policy than the efforts of the NDP, progressive economic research groups, and the labour movement combined. His ripping up of the UMSCA deal that he himself signed in 2018 reveals our weakness and subservience to the US more than any other event in recent history.
Canadian industry, labour and our body politic is under attack from the Trump tariffs, but too many people are looking for the enablers here in Canada to come to the rescue. Why would we look to either the Liberal or Conservative Parties when their leaders have for decades been responsible for the dilemma we now face? The leaders of these two parties on both the National and Provincial levels have done nothing to stop the privatization of crown corporations, the take over of essential industries by foreign based transnational corporations.
They have weakened the power of Government and the citizens it should represent by eagerly participating in the Globalist free trade movement through CPTPP, the Trans Pacific Trade Agreement, CETA, the Canada Europe Trade Agreement, CUSMA, the Canada, US, Mexico agreement and the WTO, World Trade Organization. These agreements while lowering tariffs have also strengthened the powers of transnational corporations at the expense of sovereign powers and their ability to pass environmental and labour safety legislation, or stop foreign takeovers.
The Globalist movement really started gaining momentum with the PC Brian Mulroney Government, but has continued right through the Chretien Liberal Government, Harpers Conservatives and our most recent Justin Trudeau Government. A brief appraisal of the most important Canadian industries underscores this inexorable trend described below.
Our oil and natural gas industries are now majority owned by foreign companies. We did have a publicly owned PetroCanada, but this crown corporation was privatized by the Chretien and Harper Governments. Saskatchewan’s publicly owned Potash Corporation was sold to private enterprise by the Grant Devine Conservatives in 1989 for the equivalent of two years recent annual profits. A very poor deal indeed.
Canadas nickel deposits are the among the largest in the world but this resource has never been owned by the people of Canada and the largest producer in the country is Vale, a mining company headquartered in Brazil. We are the fourth largest producer of aluminum in the world but two of the largest companies producing primarily in Quebec are Rio Tinto headquartered in London England and Melbourn Australia, and Alcoa base in Pittsburgh.
In the 1970’s, Canada had three large steel companies owned through publicly listed Canadian companies. Not anymore! Algoma Steel and Dofasco Steel are now owned by ArcelorMittal of India. Meanwhile Canada’s oldest steel foundries in Hamilton, Stelco, were acquired by Cleveland-Cliffs in November 2024. Its CEO Lourence Goncalves is a good friend of Trump who cleared the economic path for this takeover.
Our softwood lumber industry is dominated by foreign corporations. BC’s MacmillanBloedel Corporation was taken over by Weyerhaueser Company based in Seattle, Washington in 1999. This take-over was aided by controversial tariffs applied by the US on Canadian lumber, which lowered the value of the industry and facilitated a take-over. Our world class pharmaceutical company Connaught Labs was privatized and sold to Institut Merieux in 1999 and through a series of other mergers and takeovers is now owned by Sanofi Pasteur of France. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Canadians were at the mercy of foreign pharmaceutical companies to supply vaccines.
Ontario is the industrial heartland of Canada and its largest export to the US is automobiles and auto parts. Since 1962 with the US-Canada Auto Pact we have had free trade in automobiles and trucks. The rational was very simple. If the Big Three American auto producers, GM, Ford and Stellantis (Chrysler), wanted to sell their vehicles duty free in Canada they must commit to production and employment levels in Canada commensurate to their Canadian sales as a percentage of the North American market, roughly 9%. The agreement has lasted through several iterations like NAFTA and the present CUSMA trade agreements, and it has been equally beneficial. The US is not subsidizing Canada.
Our labour rates and benefits along with overall production costs are pretty equivalent to our US counterparts. The North American manufacturers are not in favour of any radical alterations that would lead to more expensive cars and a decrease in their competitiveness with other Asian and European auto assemblers in Canada. Ultimately it appears that free trade agreements with the US can be nullified at any time. This alone is a problem, but part of the solution must surely be that Canada starts producing all the parts necessary for a complete auto assembly so that we are not so vulnerable to decisions made out of country.
All of these problems in all the industries listed above listed above are now becoming more visible and part of the problem has been the dismantling of publicly owned crown corporations in Canada and bending the knee to transnational corporations and their push for greater power codified in supposed free trade deals. It has been the Liberal and Conservative Governments of Canada that has continually pushed this trend. Does it make sense to trust them to solve it.
Only the NDP has consistently supported any controls on foreign ownership. Only the NDP has consistently advocated for at least some public ownership of crucial industries. They were instrumental in the formation of of PetroCanada and the Potash Corporation in Saskatchewan. It was the ONDP that ran campaigns against the Liberal Government of Kathleen Wynne when they privatized Hydro One in 2018. If one was to vote on this issue alone in the upcoming Canadian federal election on April 28, 2025 the NDP would be the only reasonable slot to part your X.
