Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto STar

Re: Clock is ticking for a new NAFTA deal. October 31, 2019.

The new NAFTA is a great deal for Canadians and Canadian workers according to the Justin Trudeau. Workers should be very wary of what is inside this Trojan Horse.  NAFTA was originally heralded as a breakthrough for free trade in North America with Canada, Mexico and the U.S. participating but the reality turned out to be a cruel joke. People expected it to equalize prices and promote employment. As we came to find out it was nothing more than a great deal for U.S. business and a terrible deal for Canadian and Mexican workers. The bulk of Canadian auto jobs went to Mexico because of significantly cheaper labour. It was the first of many similar experiences with globalization. The latter meant much cheaper labour costs at the cost of North American jobs.

In the last thirty years since NAFTA’s inception Canadians have seen the retail landscape remain exactly the same with a significant divide in prices at the border despite a significant lowering of costs. Canadians pay much more for everything than their U.S. counterparts from gas to tires, beef, housing and automobiles. We are saddled with a Third World dollar pegged at 75 cents out of deference to the U.S. that places a 25% tax on all U.S. goods bought by Canadians so that a few Canadian businesses can compete with U.S. firms. In Mexico the country is still a poverty-stricken backwater economy governed by corruption, elitism and drug lords and the population continues to toil for peasant wages in U.S. owned factories. Even in the U.S., the main beneficiary of the original NAFTA agreement, the general population has seen little impact on their lives or jobs despite the lowest unemployment rate in fifty years. The upturn in the economy has simply put millions more McJobs into the system not improved people’s lives significantly. The only people doing extremely well are the multi-national corporations who are making stupendous profits from NAFTA while constantly crying poor. The wealth and poverty gaps around the world are staggering.

So Justin Trudeau can spare Canadians his political carny show talk about the benefits of the new NAFTA being better for workers. The new NAFTA is the same as the old NAFTA – a private sector agreement to enrich corporations, CEOs and shareholders and impoverish workers who slave away in the democratic gulag.