this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2024
137 points (100.0% liked)

Canada

7275 readers
292 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Related Communities


๐Ÿ Meta


๐Ÿ—บ๏ธ Provinces / Territories


๐Ÿ™๏ธ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.


๐Ÿ’ SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


๐Ÿ’ป Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.


๐Ÿ’ต Finance, Shopping, Sales


๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ Politics


๐Ÿ Social / Culture


Rules

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca


founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] ikidd@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Oh, great idea. Nobody ever thought of that before.

[โ€“] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Honestly? They really didn't. For a while Canada emphasized US trade for security reasons. We really should be developing closer ties to the EU.

[โ€“] ikidd@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Every province and industry has been holding trade missions for decades to diversify markets. It's not that it's easy to disconnect the US apron strings, but it's certainly been at the top of any trade organizations mind since at least the 70s.

Since we've had disputes like softwood lumber and BSE, local value-added chains have been also a massive push to incentivize and fund. Things like packing plants, lumber mills, canola crush plants, mixed product pipelines to the coast, and all the shipping terminals that make that product go away take decades to plan and implement but are another piece of the puzzle of trade independence. Those things have been in the works for a long time and every dispute with the US in the last half century have added momentum to that push.

[โ€“] ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, unfortunately basic geography means there's likely a hard limit on how much diversification is realistic.

We absolutely should do everything we can to reduce our reliance on the US, but options become limited once you remove rail and road from the equation.

[โ€“] ikidd@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Plus, we really have not done much infrastructure spending in the last decade. I saw a report that said most of our public infrastructure is 20 to 40 years without significant maintenance. That's horrendous and not helping us diversify at all.

[โ€“] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's not a new concept, but it feels less like a speculative fiction and more like a serious policy idea now.

[โ€“] ikidd@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm really mystified by this lack of awareness of work done in the past on international diversification. There have been great strides made in where we were even 20 years ago for international trade excluding the US. I've been on unpaid boards (non-profit, industry) where that's been the primary focus for my entire term. We've worked with all levels of government to try to streamline trade barriers between Canada and other countries because nobody, private or public, trusts the US to not swing their dicks around, even with sympathetic administrations in place.

Honestly, it's kind of deflating to see that work ignored.

[โ€“] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 week ago

Good for you - and that sounds fascinating. At the end of the day 0 km of extra shipping is just a really good deal, though. Maybe you know if trade across the boarder has increased or decreased by percentage of our GDP, but I'm not hopeful.

I did learn recently that our free trade agreements cover waaay more geography than I would have guessed.