Free trade: Echoes from 1911 debate HO2 Edition

• Published in: Toronto star
• Main Author: Compiled by David Crane Toronto Star
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Toronto, Ont Torstar Syndication Services, a Division of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited 01.08.1988
• Subjects: Borden, Robert; Laurier, Wilfrid
• ISSN: 0319-0781

"In the United States the dominant idea is the exploitation of the resources of the country, the exploitation of its natural resources by the great interests. In England and in Canada more attention is paid to social and economic conditions . . . As a consequence of this condition of things, affairs have come to a rather bad mess in the United States (yet) we propose to enter into closer relations with the United States, and to put the control of our tariff in their hands." "And while everybody, of course, repudiates as absurd the idea of any conscious interference either with our political freedom, or with our commercial independence, I do not believe that if this treaty goes into effect there will ever again, so long as it goes on, unless a rupture takes place, be a revision of our tariff in which United States interests, United States lobbyists, and United States pressure will not be brought to bear on this parliament. "Why are they (Americans) so solicitous for this trade treaty with Canada? . . . It is that the United States of America covets the rich natural resources of the Dominion of Canada - covets these resources not with a view of coming where the resources are, bringing labor and capital, and working them up where they exist; not that, but covets them to draw them away to their own manufacturing industries, to the centres of their own country, to make them up with their own labor to their own profit, directly and with all the subsidiary gain which accrues to manufacturing in the United States . . . ."