Canadian Politics Today

I liked the indication of reducing our reliance on the States for trade.  Also could mean less reason to involve ourselves in American wars.

Canada mostly exports raw materials because manufacturing goods is too expensive here in comparison to most other countries. The ongoing desperate belief among Canadian companies that they will ever be able to export significant amounts of goods to China, for example, is silly and pathetic.

Who we sell raw materials to is dependent on who wants it, and the competition. There's not much to choose from between wood from Canada and Brazil, oil from Canada and Nigeria. iron ore from Canada and Mexico, except cost. We can't export oil or gas, which is our major foreign export in value, to anywhere but the United States because the Lefties won't allow any pipelines to be built to the coasts. Most of our manufacturing, then, is by branch plants of American companies, as in the auto makers, Boeing, Magna (which sells to the American companies) several bus companies (which sell to America), etc. It is unrealistic to think they would be making goods cheap enough to sell to the third world - and most of Europe is locked behind a trade wall.

Military treaties are designed to share the costs. Countries which don't have them tend to spend vastly more on their military than Canada does on its, or simply... hope for the best. Ie., hope they never need their military (which is basically what we do).