Some interesting facts re: Canada and the U.S. Civil War:
- 40,000 = # of Canadians who fought in the Civil War.
- 12,000 = # of Civil War Draft dodgers who made Canada home.
But, most interesting, is Boyko's apparent contention that it was during America's bloodiest years that Canada, under John A. Macdonald government, truly became a nation.
From Tim Cook's review:
Relations between Canada and the North were not helped by the open gloating of many Canadians and their newspapers over the fast-collapsing republican experiment to the south. But far more damaging was the harbouring of Confederate terrorists who set up home in various Canadian cities, especially Montreal and Toronto, and then launched cross-border raids.
There were calls throughout the North for American troops to cross the border in retaliatory expeditions and to abrogate trade treaties. Canada barely stood the pressure. While the story here is firmly set in the past, one cannot help but draw parallels to terrorist and border threats in the early 21st century.
Even after the cessation of hostilities in 1865, the threat continued, with Irish-American Fenians storming into Canada in the ludicrous dream of capturing it and holding it ransom so that Britain would be forced to set Ireland free.The raids were enough to topple an anti-Confederation government in New Brunswick and eventually led to that colony entering into Confederation with Nova Scotia, Canada East and Canada West, on July 1, 1867.
Blood and Daring is a fast-paced read, and Boyko skillfully weaves together the complex and conflict-filled Canadian, British and American wartime policy, with John A. Macdonald emerging as the nation-building hero that he was, fending off American threats of annexation and holding off weak-willed British politicians who sought to cut Canada loose. That Canada survived was probably against the odds, but this nation has a habit of doing that.
The posturing over U.S. country of origin labeling (COOL) rules continues!
I know, just what you needed to get your Monday kick-started...
(Note: I really want to interview the people in the Dep't of Agriculture that drafted the original and now reworked COOL, or MCOOL, rules. I feel like they'd give a delicious bureaucratic description of this very technical, but very live trade issue between two of the world's friendliest nations.)
Check out BTBObserver on Canada's latest COOL retaliatory warning shot.
By Keith Edmund White
Editor-in-Chief
There's nothing like talking securities regulation to get the morning juices flowing!
But, then again, seeing as increasingly more Canadians and Americans mood follows market swings (FYI-this is not a good life plan), perhaps it will?
And, anyway, it gives you the opportunity to see just how weird Canada is.
Out of the world's major economies, Canada is the only nation that does not have a federal securities regulator. Instead, it leaves the regulation of financial trading instruments--whether they be stocks, bonds, the markets they are traded in, or dreaded derivatives--to provinces.
It's a quirk of history and federalism, and one that the Harper government had been assiduously trying to change.
Harper tasked Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty with creating a national regulator.
First, Flaherty spent years developing, vetting, and constitutionally scrutinizing a plan for a national securities regulator.
Result: the Canadian Supreme Court (understandably, in my opinion) torpedoed it.
Then Flaherty then spent a about a year trying to get a joint provincial-federal substitute.
Well, the verdict's in: Flaherty's folly is over.
Reuters reports on Canada's Securities Plan C: Give up; federalize the securities slice they can; move on.
Canada is pushing ahead with plans to create a new but watered-down version of a national securities regulator as its campaign to create a more powerful watchdog like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission appears to be headed toward failure.
The Conservative government's new plan would bypass the country's powerful provinces and focus on detecting market risk, sources familiar with the process told Reuters. This alternative, however, is unlikely to impress investors and the financial industry given its limited powers and the potential for duplication and more bureaucracy, industry officials say.
Ottawa has tried for decades to replace a patchwork of 13 provincial regulators with a single agency more in tune with today's globalized markets, arguing it would reduce costs and give it more clout to deal with the cross-border effects of reforms like the U.S. Volcker Rule.
For background on Canada's unique approach to securities regulation, and the failure Canadian legislation aiming to create an aggressive national regulator, read Securitizing Canadian Federalism: The Supreme Court of Canada and the Proposed Canadian Securities Reform Act [2011].
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By Keith Edmund White
On Thursday, May 23rd, the Skagit River Bridge collapsed, bringing down a critical trade link between Canada and the United States.
It may not be surprising, then, that a week latter Canada and the United States gave an official roll-out to the Canada-United States Border Infrastructure Investment Plan (BIIP). (BTB Observer blogs on the roll-out here, and provides a nice link to the actual plan).
Last Thursday, the NYTimes reported
on the impact of the collapse to the town of Burlington, WA:
The malls are still open, and the cars and trucks creeping through town day and night along the detour routes are testament that the highway corridor, though temporarily crippled, is still in use. But now the people are not coming to buy, and they are mostly not stopping. The message by the state to avoid the area to help ease congestion, and the news images of stalled traffic and twisted steel, have created a secondary collapse, business and political leaders here said, in a community that was poised this year to finally break through, back to prerecession health.
...
That a 160-foot section of highway bridge could catastrophically fail without causing serious injuries — cars into the river, passengers treated and released — is still a source of head-shaking wonder. About 70,000 vehicles used the half-century-old steel truss bridge every day, and the evening rush had barely ebbed when, around 7 p.m. last Thursday, a truck’s oversize load struck a girder, crumpling the structure in a chain of events still being investigated by federal authorities.
State transportation officials said this week that they are hoping to have a temporary spanin place by mid-June, with a permanent fix later this year. But they also cautioned that the temporary bridge — truckloads of components began arriving this week — will be constrained in its use and capacity, with a reduced speed limit. Detours for oversize vehicles will remain in place for months.
The United States has a D+ infrastructure problem. Perhaps the increased attention of this collapse, and the international attention it brings can ensure, at the very least, vital border crossings are maintained.
In any case, it shows that the Canada-U.S. relationship plays an important and daily role in the lives of Americans and Canadians, alike. And getting Canada-U.S. priority issues done right not just secures economic growth in both nations, and works to protect lives.
From an op-ed by fmr. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair and Jon Huntsman, Jr., '12 Republican presidential contender, in yesterday's WaPo:
The scale is staggering. The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, which we co-chaired, estimates that the total revenue loss to U.S. companies is comparable to the total value of U.S. exports to all of Asia. U.S. software manufacturers — a sector in which this country leads the world — lose tens of billions of dollars in revenue annually from counterfeiting just in China, where the problem is most rampant. The U.S. International Trade Commissionestimated in 2011 that if IP protection in China improved substantially, U.S. businesses could add 2.1 million jobs.
We agree with Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of U.S. Cyber Command, that the ongoing theft of U.S. intellectual property is “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.”
But Canada can just count on its booming natural resources sector...forever?
Highlights from Wells' column and the STIC Report that suggest Canada may be losing its sci-tech edge:
- If it manages to push Canada up 7 spots in international rankings of research intensity, the country will be back where it was, compared to peer countries, on the day Stephen Harper became prime minister.
- "So Canada has more scientists than ever, and each is able to do less science than she would have been able to do a decade ago."
- "The ability to deploy our talent to best advantage—to maximize the impact of people’s knowledge and skills in our labour force and our society—is equally important...in the services sector, Canada’s performance is mediocre when compared to other OECD countries. In manufacturing, the picture is dismal—the HRST share of the manufacturing labour force is among the lowest in the OECD." (STIC Report, Chapter 7)
- "At the beginning of this century, Canadian business R&D funding stood at 1.05 percent of GDP, and it has fallen fairly steadily to 0.81 percent in 2011." (STIC Report, Chapter 3)
From Paul Wells' praiseworthy column in Maclean's:
The good news is that on pure science, Canada continues to perform better than most other countries. “With a share of only 0.5 percent of global population, Canada accounted for 4.4 percent of the world’s natural sciences and engineering publications in 2010. This positions Canada eighth after countries with significantly larger populations: the U.S., China, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, France and Italy.”
The bad news is that Canada is letting its science advantage fritter away, as if that could somehow help its private-sector R&D gap close. In 2007 Canada continued to rank first among G7 countries in HERD, or R&D expenditure in the higher-education sector. But as I have argued elsewhere, it’s increasingly useful to consider the G7 as an international losers’ club. It’s the U.S., Japan and Old Europe. When you throw Canada into the larger pool of 41 countries STIC looks at — countries with a bit of mojo, like Brazil, India, China, Poland, Israel and Sweden — Canada has fallen from third in 2006, to 4th in 2008 — to 9th in 2011. “With their significant investments in research and higher education,” this panel writes, “other countries are catching up and overtaking Canada.”
Between 2006 and 2010, the annual number of science PhD graduates in Canada grew by nearly half — a lagging reflection, I suspect, of the formidable growth in science capacity in Canada between 1997 and 2002. A generation of students came of age at a time when Canada was developing an international reputation as a relative science oasis. They had their university careers and came onto the job market. But it’s a shaky market now. This larger cohort of scientists is searching for stagnant or declining grant budgets. Success rates for research grant applications are falling. So Canada has more scientists than ever, and each is able to do less science than she would have been able to do a decade ago.
It’s a peculiar situation. The government has known, since its first year in office, that the private sector is not doing enough applied research. Its response has been to put the brakes on pure research in universities. The result has been that the weakness has continued to aggravate, while the strength has been put in danger. At Davos more than a year ago, Harper said his government would “continue to make the key investments in science and technology necessary to sustain a modern competitive economy.” It’s not clear what he meant by “continue.” It is true that recent changes at the National Research Council are designed to bolster, or accompany, or synergize with, or somehow prop up private-sector applied research. I can only wish the NRC luck. If it manages to push Canada up 7 spots in international rankings of research intensity, the country will be back where it was, compared to peer countries, on the day Stephen Harper became prime minister.
iPolitics offers this insight into Michael Froman, the White House's nominee for United States Trade Representative:
With a doctorate from Oxford, Froman has been a friend of the president since their days at Harvard law school — of which he’s also a graduate.
Most recently, however, he’s played a sherpa role in the lead up to G-8, G-20, and APEC summits, and Schwab maintains he’s got the president’s full attention.
“They’ve got a USTR who clearly has the president’s ear,” Schwab followed. “I think the key is to get him in place as soon as possible.”
Scotty Greenwood — a senior advisor at the American-Canadian Business Council — told iPolitics that in addition to being extremely intelligent, Froman also has a great grasp of the Canada-U.S. relationship, having done a lot of work behind the scenes to drive forward the Beyond the Border and regulatory cooperation initiatives.
“He was the U.S. sherpa for G-20 and G-8 as well as APEC, and what that means is there are lots of opportunities for him to — from the point of view of the National Security Council and advisor to the president — to coordinate the White House interaction with the prime minister,” she said.
“Because of all the multilateral get-togethers that Canada and the U.S. are both part of, the president and the prime minister had quite a large number of opportunities to interact with each other right after the president was elected. So Michael Froman was in the middle of all that.”
