Say ‘No’ to Buy Canadian

(National Post – Terence Corcoran)

Canada has more to lose by playing the protectionist game

The great steam boats of Canadian trade retaliation are leaving port, heading off in all directions. There’s the SS Michael Ignatieff, who appeared set to engage the United States in a retaliatory skirmish over Buy American policies. “We need to remind the Americans that we’ve got a multi-billion dollar municipal and provincial procurement market in this country,” Mr. Ignatieff told the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) on the weekend. “Americans have unfettered access to it right now, but if they shut down their markets, there will be consequences.”

Thus fired up, Canada’s municipalities voted to adopt something called a “fair trade” resolution that establishes a “common front” to try to stop protectionism built into U. S. economic stimulus legislation. Under the stimulus laws, state and local municipal infrastructure projects can only buy international goods from countries that have local procurement agreements with the United States.

Many countries have such agreements, and as a result the Buy American provisions do not hurt their industries. But Canada does not have local procurement pacts with the United States, which means Canadian businesses cannot participate in the $780-billion U. S. economic stimulus bonanza.

The FCM mayors said they “stand united” – sort of, the vote being 189-175 – in threatening “countervailing procurement measures” against the United States. So as not to appear to be fomenting an immediate trade war, the resolution said the mayors are “holding back” their endorsement of countervailing trade action for 120 days.

This is all mostly sabre-rattling, but it can be dangerous. Among the dissenters was Toronto Mayor David Miller. The left-wing mayor of Canada’s biggest city suddenly emerged as a free-trader. “It is appropriate to ask for free trade; it is not appropriate to make threats.” Read the complete editorial here.