Why not a free trade agreement?
EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
431–440 of 878 posts
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dairy is highly protected in Canada. For better or for worse. Exceptions were made for cheeses though. They've dropped significantly in (relative) price and varieties of imports have improved significantly in the last 10 years. Even the most white-bread grocery stores tend to stock a selection of decent European cheeses now.
i eat a certain cheese almost every day and i feel like im being molested very time i stock up. i get your general point, but the dairy cartel reigns supreme. it's funny because we had someone running for PM in 2017 who was the only person who said they'd fix it and he was branded a racist right-winger. politics in canada is rworded
I've started making my own cheese (with the new 6% milk we have in the grocery stores here in Ontario now). 4 litres of $10 6% milk gives me a huge pile of halloumi or similar that lasts the week. Protein / nutrition wise works out to be about 2/3rds the price of equivalent chicken and like 1/3rd the price of beef. About an hour and a half of rather enjoyable labour.
I have mixed feelings about the dairy cartel. I am in favour of reform of some kind to eliminate the quota system but I also don't want a flood of American milk into the Canadian market.
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#433Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an improvement for the economy and that mainly benefits the shareholders. How you redistribute those gains more broadly is an open question. But keeping inefficiencies in place to protect workers at all costs is a losing strategy in the long term - see: Soviet Union.
Unsurprisingly, people in different parts of the world hold different values. Europe is generally more focused on actual people and how their lives live, than simply accumulation of wealth among the few. It is unsurprising that they focus on different things.
That's easier said than done when you are competing in a global economy. The US is actually getting more consistent here: It starts to become more isolationist (through the trade war and specifically tariffs) and as a result will have more leeway in choosing their own mix of workers rights, compensations, taxation, etc. Sidenote: Of course consumers will be worse off as a result.
The EU however is in this weird spot where they are pushing for a more integrated global economy (thanks to all kinds of trade deals) with fewer barriers while at the same time making their own companies less competitive with all these regulations and internal hurdles: There are examples where a German exporter had an easier time sending his stuff to New Zealand than France.
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#435No idea what this actually means, if it means easier trade, I'm all for anything that reduces our dependency on the yanks, as long as we don't need to be involved in their regulatory or legal regimes. The Americans are no longer our friends, Salut, mes amis Européens. :)
I was surprised to learn that Canada doesn't even have free trade across their own provenances. A big benefit of the United States is that it's essentially a very large free trade zone across 50 states.
If Canada wanted to facilitate trade, I would imagine they would figure it out internally. So my guess is that this is just giving up some political autonomy for some unknown reason, maybe to stick it to the US?
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually going to raise questions as to why the EU are A-OK with this now when a possible interpretation of associate membership is it's what Cameron was trying to negotiate the UK into when complete inflexibility on the EU side triggered the Brexit referendum. All depends on what an associate member is of course.
I missed the part where the UK was willing to give up all veto and voting rights and still have freedom of movement. Both of which Canada is ok with.
A majority of Canadians haven’t decided this in an election, and I doubt that 20 million of them would be on board with it.
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#437No idea what this actually means, if it means easier trade, I'm all for anything that reduces our dependency on the yanks, as long as we don't need to be involved in their regulatory or legal regimes. The Americans are no longer our friends, Salut, mes amis Européens. :)
Carney was asking for freedom of movement of goods, people and services, but without full monetary and legislative integration. So, easier to sell stuff, easier to buy stuff, free to just travel to/from Canada/EU and work there with no extra paperwork, free to buy and sell service from Canada to EU and vice versa. No Euro, no vote in EU, no ECJ, no payments into each others budget. Tighter integration than UK, not as…
> ...wait for Australia to join first.
A possibility.
https://www.reuters.com/business/australia-on-same-page-cana...
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not sure, if I see the example of US as federation, it might work well for corporations only, but people have nothing, uniformity doesn't work because not all populations have the same needs/expectations
Maybe, but it’s way too difficult to do business in the EU. Not because I think regulations are bad. But regulations need to be well designed with clears lines on what the Federal / State are allowed to do.
You can't deal with 27 different groups of people without dealing with 27 different groups of people or forcibly unifying them to become 1 group. I'm sure you agree the latter is bad.
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
And how does that make you feel?
I don't know. How did writing the farcical nonsense about Canada being "down-levelled" make you feel? Must have felt like you're clutching onto a delusion? Don't worry, America still has the cartoonishly pathetic "Board of Peace" (though the Arab despots might not be as eager now that the US got completely humiliated by some isolated rogue theocracy), and your close allies Argentina and El Salvador.
Don't forget North Korea and Russia.
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#440This would be Canada getting down leveled to the minor leagues. Yes there are a few issues with the US, but Canada is vastly better off playing on the world stage under the wings of the US than it would be as the EU’s “associate member.” The next phase of history is going the be China and the US and then everyone else scrambling for scraps.
Calling for Canada playing "under the wings of the US" is like calling for Ukraine to play "under the wings of Russia".
The US government has repeatedly called for invasion of Canada. Canada would be insane not to find allies against the American threat.