We are now witnessing in real time our close neighbour (that Canada once called its friend) try to dictate who we can be friends with, trade with, what we can trade, while our neighbour gets preferential treatment on anything that that country wants. And they will have access to our market for whatever subsidized product that they want to dump at a price that will be below our cost of production and put Canada’s producers out of business. That president also wants control over Canada’s sovereignty, defence and who we can buy from. He has also suggested several times that Canada should become the 51st state of the U.S. The “once great” United States, which used to be the envy of the world, has fast become one of the least trusted countries that more people every year avoid traveling to. A leader who claims to have stopped many wars has started more wars than any country in the world.
The so-called leader just south of us has totally denied climate change, eliminated all encouragement to use electric automobiles, and stopped programs that may address and slow global warming. All this while scientists have declared climate change as the greatest threat to this planet’s future. Our descendants will inherit our mistakes. China, a country that we laughed at for many years, has surpassed the U.S. in agricultural and most other research. China has also become #1 in developing and deploying green energy technology, while the U.S. is moving backwards.
Food safety has always been a priority of our farmers. Grampa used to say that if a farmer will not drink the milk that his cows produce, he shouldn’t be allowed to sell it to anyone else. But during the last half century, pharmaceutical companies have been developing GMO crops and the herbicides that will kill weeds in those crops without killing the crop. Some of those herbicides, insecticides, and bactericides have been linked to terminal diseases. While some of our medical doctors and their associations remain quite skeptical of the safety of some of those chemicals, the U.S. president has declared the chemicals in question to be safe. Some new chemicals made from “forever chemicals” (which never break down or become safe) have also been approved for some crops commonly used in foods. Canada’s laws regarding use of those chemicals in question are a lot more restrictive than U.S. guidelines.
Some of the best made automobiles in the world are made in Canada. The “big three” in automobiles is no longer “the big three”. I have spent a decade sitting in parking lots while Jeannie has a physio appointment in the city. I have noticed a huge change in the names of cars in that time. Now I notice that at least 80 per cent of cars in the parking lots are not the old North American names. Most cars are now made in Asia. Even some traditionally North American cars are now made in China. While traveling through farming country, we see more tractors and farm machinery that was designed and manufactured outside the U.S. The U.S. president recently complained that his country was importing pasta from Europe. The once great U.S. has made many mistakes in recent years that has cost them trillions of dollars in non-subsidies which their taxpayers have had to pay for. Now they are trying to make the rest of the world pay for their mistakes with tariffs imposed on imports. Those tariffs have to be paid for by the U.S. consumers too. Do you think that Canadian negotiators should buckle to the U.S. demands?
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
