National Post
Thursday, February 19, 2009
U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Canada offers us an opportunity for partnership that we should seize with both hands.
We won’t get out of our economic crisis unless we work with our neighbour to make the North American economy more efficient and competitive. The crisis creates an opportunity for political leadership on both sides of the border, and a chance to break down the barriers that prevent our two economies from reaching their full potential.
A North American agenda begins with a strong defence of continental free trade. President Obama has shown leadership in condemning “Buy American” measures in Congress, and leaders in Canada need to stand up against protectionism in our own country, as well. Protectionist moves in Congress, like the Country of Origin labelling in livestock, continue to hold back our exporters. No country stands to lose more from a protectionist turn in the U. S. than Canada, and we need to say loud and clear that protectionism will lead both of our countries backwards.
Besides a renewed commitment to free trade, we need to work together to ensure that people and goods can move more freely across our borders. Over $1.5-billion in trade crosses the Canada-U. S. border every day, and there are more than 100 million individual crossings each year.
While our competitors in Europe are tearing down the borders between their economies, our border with the United States is becoming a choke-chain on both of our economies. We’ve never succeeded in creating the “smart border” we thought we would after 9/11, and in many ways our border practices are less intelligent than ever. We need to invest jointly in border infrastructure, work together to improve security at our key maritime ports and increase pre-clearance for goods away from the border. We should try to persuade the Americans to stop the introduction of the passport requirement due in June of this year.
A secure but efficient border is crucial for the growth of many industries in Canada, none more so than our automotive sector. We need to work with the U.S. government, but also with industry leaders and autoworkers, to ensure that the rescue package being put together by the Obama administration also safeguards Canadian jobs and product mandates. At the same time, Canada and the United States should develop common emissions standards so that we come out of the current crisis with a green, energy-efficient automobile industry.
President Obama’s administration offers Canada the first opportunity in eight years to develop a complementary approach for the sustainable development of natural gas, petroleum and hydroelectric energy. We should immediately begin working toward a common cap-and-trade system, with a hard cap on emissions and defined reduction targets for industrial emissions.
Our environmental partnership should extend into the far north. Canada and the United States should work together, with other northern nations, to protect this region for the whole globe. We should applaud the President’s campaign commitment not to undertake drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We should maintain Canada’s long-held legal position that the North West Passage is an inland waterway and not an international strait, but we should not allow our disagreement with the Americans on the issue to preclude bilateral efforts to ensure good stewardship and orderly management by Canadians of passage through the waterway. We need to reinvigorate the Arctic Council so that all northern nations develop common strategies to mitigate the impact of global warming, avoid conflict over resource development and improve the lives of the region’s indigenous peoples.
Beyond North America, our two countries can work together to strengthen global institutions. This goes beyond the United Nations and the international climate change protocols. Canada has a good record in regulating our banking and financial services sector. We should work with the Americans and other G20 countries to develop new rules for international global finance to spare the world another financial crisis in the future.
The Americans respect the hard work we have done in Afghanistan. Our military engagement there is drawing to a close, but while we still have troops on the ground, we should work with Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, to bring greater strategic coherence to the NATO mission and greater focus to our reconstruction and development efforts.
When President Obama visits us today, we have a choice. We can either complain about unsolved problems or seize the opportunity to excite him with the possibilities of partnership. Together we can make our economies stronger and the world a safer place. Let’s seize the chance his visit offers us.
- Michael Ignatieff is the MP for Etobicoke-Lakeshore and leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
