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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MARCH 22, 1985
PAGE 11
With a common border, a common cultural heritage and a common
capitalist tendency for profit, Canada and the United States have
forged the closest economic links of any two truly independent
countries in the world, exchanging around $100 billion in goods,
services and resources each year. It is an economic relationship
so massive that neither government can even monitor it fully, let
alone control it. According to one estimate, upward of 2 million
American jobs depend, at least in part, on trade with Canada.
The bilateral exchanges are so big that the amount traded between
the United States and just � Canadian province, Ontario, is
Iar9er than all the trade between the United States and Japan,
America's next largest trading partner••••
Compared with disarmament talks or a Russian invasion of Afghan
istan, the economic skirmishes that have broken out regularly
across the 49th parallel over things like fishing, trucking, mag
azines and even acid rain can seem more like the disputes of some
colossal city council than issues affecting international rela
tions••••
The United States remains by far the largest foreign investor in
Canada, with about $45 billion (United States dollars) in direct
investment.
Given the weak Canadian dollar and the perceived
nationalistic hostility of the Trudeau Government in its waning
years, that sum had actually declined by more than $4 billion••••
In his first five months in office, Mr. Mulroney, who confronts a
sluggish economy and a stubborn 11 percent unemployment rate, has
made it clear he wants to change that image because it is neces
sary to change that economy.
"Canada is open for business
again," he said, claiming to have launched "a fundamental change"
in economic direction that welcomes new foreign investment and
private-sector business. This point of view is not universally
applauded; more foreign investment can be a very controversial
policy in the new Canada••••
Canada has come to play a deep and far-ranging role in the life of
the United States. The Canadian economic push to the south has
occurred in everything from banking, beer, utilities, farming,
real estate, manufacturing, to entertainment and communications.
Not to mention mobs of Canadian tourists who, any winter, can
total one million in Florida alone.
This is not so much an invading Canadian manifest destiny as it
is a businessman's destiny of manifests.
Canada is a large
market, but the United States is an enormous market. As Canadian
companies reach maturity, and as the limited markets at home come
under the control of a few large companies, the most logical and
tempting target to aim at is right next door.
So much so, in
fact, that Canada•••has come from out of nowhere with more than
$11.1 billion to become the third largest foreign investor in the
United States today, after the United Kingdom and the Nether
lands•••• It has become a familiar characteristic of the emerging
joint continental economy that one Canadian beer, Moosehead from
New Brunswick, is better known in the United States, where it is
available in all 50 states, than it is in its homeland, where it
is available in only three of the 12 provinces and terri
tories••••