By G.D. Maxwell
Call it a fascination with round numbers, if you will. I don’t claim to understand it and, let’s face it, other than a few deciduous leaves acid-tripping into technicolour and my declaring a moratorium on Anatomy of Change, there’s really no difference between this week and last week. Except that this week is a small celebration of my fascination with round numbers.
Or at least it would be if I were feeling more celebratory.
But it’s getting harder and harder to be my joyous, upbeat, Debil-may-care self. With Katrina creating new Gulf coast waterfront property far inland from where waterfront property used to be, even the spirits of a party town like N’Awlins have been dampened and washed away, leaving those of us with no greater connection to the place than the lingering memories of Café du Monde’s hot beignets or Louis Armstrong’s jazz wondering whether it’s a good idea to rebuild the subterranean city or use its demise as the first in a number of future exercises of how we manage the sinking of great coastal cities in the age of global warming.
It’s hard to celebrate in the face of such destruction.
It’s hard to celebrate Canada’s softwood lumber victory at the highest appeals tribunal of NAFTA in the face of the U.S. government’s blatant refusal to recognize the validity of the ruling, the inequity of its own rogue-nation, anti-freetrade, unilateral imposition of punitive duties and its continuing acquiescence to the unreasonable demands of a few governors and industry lobby groups to keep the tariff in place, NAFTA be damned. What’s the biggest little country in North America to do when its Good Friend and neighbour turns out to be a sulking, petulant bully?
Rational voices are calling for the True North to strike back, slap countervailing duties on, for example, California wine. Or curtail oil and gas exports to our ever energy thirsty southern friends.
Those are, in the parlance of social scientists, bad ideas. As appealing as the enduring David and Goliath myth may be, getting into a pissing match of a trade war with our Good Friends in the U.S. is a bit like poking a stick at a snarling pit bull – fun for a while but destined to end badly.
I believe Canada would be far better off to simply acknowledge the U.S.’ deeply held belief that we’re trade bullies when it comes to softwood lumber, trade bullies who unfairly subsidize our industry, all evidence to the contrary. Rather than start a trade war we can’t win, I believe we should acquiesce to our Good Friends’ point of view on softwood lumber… and simply stop sending them any.
Now, admittedly, that would be a blow to an industry that’s already taken a kicking but let’s put on our thinking caps and see if we can’t come up with some half-baked idea to mitigate the further insult cutting off exports might visit on it. Before we do though, let’s ask ourselves this question: What would happen if Canada stopped exporting softwood lumber to the U.S.?
Interesting question; glad you asked. The first thing that would happen is that there would suddenly be a very, very large gap, economically speaking, between supply and demand. Most economists would agree that a very large gap between high demand and reduced supply would lead to a sudden, very dramatic increase in the price of whatever commodity you’re talking about, softwood lumber in this case.
In a daisy chain kind of effect, the rising price and lack of sufficient supplies of softwood lumber would, in all likelihood, burst the housing bubble which has been threatening to burst now for the better part of the summer. It’s probably good to note at this point that the housing bubble is, at the moment, about the only thing propping up the U.S. economy, what with the quag…, er, war in Iraq being a substantial drain on the treasury, the price of oil crippling many other industries, the amazing, growing balance of trade deficit – and the spectre of China holding oodles of U.S. IOUs – and now the need to rebuild the Gulf coast and the concomitant loss of about 10 per cent of the country’s domestic oil supplies and processing capability.
The next thing that would happen is the 47 other governors who have been either quiet or ignorant about the whole softwood lumber thing would begin to bellow in the direction of the White House to lift the goddam tariff before their entire states’ economies go into the crapper. Finally, some countervailing voices to chorus against the ones demanding the tariffs stay in place.
And big little Canada could remain on the moral high ground, having never stooped to something so low as slapping unwarranted duties on California grapejuice or embroiling itself in a trade war with its Good Friend or threatening its energy supplies.
Naturally, the softwood lumber folks in Canada might not be as keen on this idea as I am. But maybe they ought to think about lowering the domestic price of their product to around, say, the net price they get for it after factoring in U.S. duties. Even though it wouldn’t make up for the loss of market, it would spur the Canadian housing industry. And maybe they ought to ask Little Pauly Martin for something like a five-year tax holiday on mortgage interest, which would further boost the housing industry, put more Canadians in their own homes, encourage others to renovate and have a significant multiplier effect through all the housing-related industries.
Now that would be worth celebrating.
But so is my fascination with round numbers. In the same way we modestly celebrate our car’s odometer clicking over thousands and, if we’re lucky, hundreds of thousands of kilometres or the way we make a fuss over round-number birthdays – The Big Four Oh – I’m celebrating this week. Pop the corks, always a good idea, and light the candles. This week is my Big Five Oh… Oh.
Ten years ago, Bob Barnett walked into the place I was working, on a day I was not a particularly happy camper, and said, "You wanna write a column for the Pique."
"Why not?" I replied, thinking to myself this was the most half-assed idea I’d ever heard.
This week, we’re 500 weeks into the experiment, it having taken Bob a while to convince everyone else even thinking of letting me write for the paper was a good idea. Hence, my current fascination with round numbers.
Frankly, I didn’t think it’d last more than a couple of weeks, months at most. But then, there’s a fine line between perseverance and pigheadedness.
Don’t ask me which this represents.
