US Canada Relations case study
[Room 1425 10am- 12pm]
"Getting attention of Big Brothers"
Intro by Jack Austin
- Canada's the most important relations - US/Canada
- our foreign policy concern
- Canada/US relation "getting attention of Big Brothers"
- keep a very low profile with US
- Mexico/US relations
- very high profile in the US
- question: attention for what reason? why do we want the attention?
Alexander Moens
- US/Canada boarder becoming checkpoint - enormously unpleasant ; avaerage cost 20 millions
- traditionally, our best approach, not to be visible, but that changed - we have to be visible
- 9/11 - security
- security is right between us
- secuirty is a key issue to the US
- what can we do to make it to genuine boarder; how can we make it as a single economic space
- reaching similar outcomes by different means
- US congress - immune to supernationalism
- national governemnt
- does not delegate any soverignty
- approach with business model up
- Canada
- since 9/11, Americans moved to security-nationalism
- we tried to catch up like them
- built 19century nation borders (US)
- now entering American economic nationalism
- enormous risk of significant mobility loss, prosperity loss, foriegn policy loss
- need harmonized security criteria on immigrants/refugees
- need to do better job on security check
- need to build economic relationship other than NAFTA agreement
- think about "Canada/US product standard, regulatory area"
- mutural product standards
Brenda Swick
- Canada is the US's largest energy supplier, export market
- energy - oil, gas
- secure supplier of energy to the US
- protect digital industry
- Canada does not have a power to cease/detain goods (counterfeit goods)
- needs border enforcement system
- 90% of the report of the US is about China
- attract bad attention from the US?
- US - local economic business interests
- have impact on their local level industries would get his attention
- want them to take notice the value of Canada in the North American market
- export sale/development of energy
- recommendation: Canada ought to explore with other jurisdiction to diversify of provision of energy and the export market
- what can be done with US political system
Peter Leitch
- 25yrs of BC - location of film/tv industry
- policies to maintain that BC is cultural industry
- recent years, significant BC's economy and Canada's
- 80% is US based
- but not enough recognition
- potential leader of digital enertainment/industry
- we should loosen Canadian content laws
- review Canadian content laws(eliminate)
- culture will develop itself
James Dean
- American systems - more risk taking and enterpreneurial
- US fianancial system - volatile
- TD bought commerce bank - 1100 retail outlets in the US
- our presence on Wall Street is very important
- Royal Bank (full-paid ad)
- world economic forum
- last October(2008)
- in terms of health, service, survival measured by sounded banking(stock) Canada was number 1
- corporate culture
- ogopoly - our big banks have 80% of the market share
- Toronto 300,000 employees in finance industry
- global financial index - Toronto # 12
- Canada has cross-country network
- stable deposit network
- well supervised firewall
- we have better reuglatory system in balance
- push Canada as major financial area
Four Big Points:
- harmonize the border (economic/security space)
- use energy as leverage
- let us reduce competitive distinction so we can build stronger sectoral industry
-take control of banking system (Wall Street)
- drift in the relationship (recoverable?)
1. shift in power (political/economic power) - politician tend to look to the South
2. demographic (Canada- euro-asian society) (US - euro-latino society)
3. security (since 9/11) - thicking the US border, huge decline the US citizens/residents to Canada
tourism, eocnomic decline
- can be a lot harmonization that we can do
- want the US attention? why?
- any big ideas to turn the relationship into different way
- should be measuring what we can do internationally
Swick - regulations: ex) container sizes
- Canada has regulations;
- process products, have to sell in designated containers.
- in the US, huge range of container sizes
- cosumers do not get diverse choices
- energy
- let's not be a captive market/supplier
- explore diversity/alternative market
- water : not eager to send/export water to the south
Moens - think about water at home, potential commodity
- real system of property rights on water before we send water away
- sustainable coherent water rights (inculding property) before we think about tradable water
- role of some national relations in Canada and the US
Dean - border thicken because of the interest; can't negotiate properly between two nations
- regulations,
- we have NAFTA we do not have common tariff
- why do we need border securities?
- turns everyone as smugglers
- how important Canadian soverignty , how different are we from the US
- relationship is there
- Canada/US; both federal states
- US-Canada - federal states relating
- sub-national relations
- 1984 treaty - sub-national agreement between BC/Seattle
- problem - we know too much, but understand less
- bilingual, bicultural (American-Canadian)
- the degree of understanding/fluency of other countries' ways are not what we think it is
- encourage/develop flow of information
- Canada using closeness to the US; do we have leverage for the US?
- North American cultural system Culture - being able to tell our own stories
- border being tight, difficult to travel to the US
- Canada relying on foriegn business - can be interrupted by politics/ dollar fluctuation
Dean - since NAFTA, our culture has been more distinct
- we are euro-asian
- we are economically powerful
- the border is more open than 30yrs ago,
- closeness to US and other countries in the world strengthened our identity
- we should be exporting our culture
Moen - self-confidence as a Canadian
- unless we have this confidence, should come up with a big helpful plan if we want the US's attention
- when we have the US president on our side, we can have an impact
- agreement, where the US would teach about Canada during social studies class and vice versa
- so they have an idea of neighbouring countries
Leitch - no barriers to deisgn programs
- digital entertainment centre
- educational systems to attract the best of international students
- develop groups of talent students (cutlurally)
- need to develop path ways
- open to immigration
- Microsoft in Canada because they could not get talents in the US
- teaching US/Canada studies - good idea
- having influence on US policy
- Canadian values
- perception of Canadians in the US
- Candians = foreigners
- demonization of Canada by the right wing(US)
- how do we get Canada political mandate to harmonize?
Swick - Canada lost momentum to China
Moen - more free trade, more choices for consumer
Summary by Austin
- how confident Canada is about our future?
- strong economy coming around after Second World War
- strong trade relationship with the US
- are we confident about our soverignty
- in this era of globalization (we lost dominance in relationship with US)
- dependent on natural resources
- are we good traders in environmental technologies?
- one-hand tied, such as certain agricultural regulations
- Indian and China
- have backed-away, and now we are trying to gain the position again
- by renewing with the US, by doing things closer to US wanted from us, what do we get?
- is there a one big idea that will make difference to US-Canada relationship?
- failure of university system to teach US history/politics
Summary by Dean
- banks: we have competitive advantage
- Austria - colonized eastern europe with their bank
Summary by Leitch
- strategic partnership in certain sectors
- keep working in building these relationships
Summary by Swick
- find a way to engage them understand that we are value-added in North American market
- engage in diversification in export market
end of session