When Trump talks about the 51st state or ‘jokes’ about a merger, most people think of a territorial invasion. Meanwhile, what we’ve missed is the ongoing erosion of our economic sovereignty that’s been happening under our noses.
Without re-litigating NAFTA and the USMCA — simultaneously the best and worst trade deals ever, depending on when you’re asking the man who spearheaded it — these choices and the neoliberal political order that created them are part of the trend that brought us here. Deep integration with the U.S., the takeover of Canadian firms by American corporations, and the outsized influence of American multinationals on Canada’s economy and government may feel like new problems in this moment, but they have been growing for years.
The Walmartization of Canada began a long time ago. PetroCan (a Crown corp) was privatized by Mulroney in '91 and sold to Suncor in '04, Woolco to Walmart in '93, Tim Hortons to RBI in '14, etc etc etc.
Canadian Wheat Board now Saudi Owned.
Yeah. A gift from the Harper regime.
the takeover of Canadian firms by American corporations, and the outsized influence of American multinationals on Canada’s economy
This is a problem that has been in the making for generations.
That said, I’m glad to see we are finally starting to take some action to push back a bit.
Unfortunately I don’t know if there’s a way to kick em out (e.g. by forcing them to sell) without getting ourselves kicked in the gut by the gorilla. We may be forced to create public alternatives to compete with them instead, where appropriate.
I was sad to see Peter Bros. Construction in BC recently got sold to a Blackrock-owned multinational that was found guilty of using forced labour in Qatar not long ago too.
Yeah, and here on Lemmy is a large community that is now campaigning for China to erode Canada’s sovereignty even more.
Even on the BuyCanadian subreddit, they’d rather use Reddit, an American company and software over the open source one with this instance being hosted in Canada.
If everyday Canadians would stop shopping at these places they’d eventually go away without political backlash. Unfortunately, I don’t think people are willing to give up F150s and Costco for anything.
Agreed. The majority of people seem to have a problem with giving up convenience. Case in point: I fought against and posted against “self check out”. People lose jobs. EI, CPP, and taxes are lost when we choose the self check-out. And yet, we keep doing it. Stores purposely have less tellers so people will get fed up and move to the self check out. If everyone REFUSED to use self check out, they would go away. People aren’t willing to take a stand. Sad. I still refuse to use self check out,
Free trade eroded sovereignty and we were all told to shut the fuck up about it and they went ahead with their business and trade deals.
