Free Trade?
Free trade has been debated for many years with strong views held by many people. The problem is that everyone sees international trade from his or her own perspective. Let’s look at the issue from a different perspective for a few moments.
Imagine that you are a small farmer in the (fictional) country of “Wobegone.” You and your family eke out a living on a few acres of land that your family has farmed for many generations. You have a large vegetable garden, a field of grain, a few chickens, a couple of pigs and one milk cow. You trade with neighbours, sell some produce and eggs at the local market, and cash in most of the grain for money to pay the rest of your bills each year. You never get ahead in life but you have enough to feed your family and have a comfortable little home on your property.
Now imagine the country of Wobegone signs on to the biggest free trade deal in the world, with promises of access to the biggest markets filled with rich consumers waiting to buy products from your country. As you can imagine, low cost grains and meat flood into your country because any tariff control your country used to have, is not allowed under the agreement. Since some of those rich countries subsidise food production, those products are landing in your country cheaper than you can produce them.
Within two years you are forced to leave the farm and move your family to a shack on the edge of the city and go to work in a shoe factory for 12 cents per hour. You now struggle to feed your family and all hope for a bright future starts to fade away.
Fast-forward twenty years and “Wobegone” ends up voting against the USA on some issue at the UN and gets slammed with a trade embargo by all it’s rich trading partners.
The grain and meat stop being imported, the shoes stop being exported and your country is in big, big trouble. The land has been reclaimed by the forest, and the skills and tools are no longer available to go back to being a self sufficient, food producing country.
Now I ask you, do you want to be part of a trade deal that would see any country trade away the ability to feed themselves in good times and bad?
Could Canada end up trading away it’s ability to feed it’s own population through this type of deal?
We live like kings in this great country of ours. Do we really need a bigger house, a faster car, or the newest high tech gadget, that might be achieved if we get more access to foreign food markets?
I am not saying we should not be food exporters to countries that want our products, but don’t strip away their ability to protect their own farmers and keep them viable.
When I consider the free trade issue, I feel we should separate two things from the discussion. Every country should have the ability to protect their own food and energy production. If the rich countries continue to get richer, and the poor countries continue to get poorer, then I am afraid we may see more unrest in our world.
Barry McKay
Barry McKay