duties

Wednesday April 26, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday April 26, 2017

Canada pursues possible trade deal with China as softwood lumber dispute with U.S. heats up

December 7, 2005

Exploratory free trade talks are underway this week as Canadian and Chinese officials visit one another’s countries to discuss what a potential agreement might look like.

Chinese officials are gathering at the offices at Global Affairs Canada, while two federal ministers, International Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne and Finance Minister Bill Morneau, are in China.

In Washington on Friday, Morneau said his China trip will focus on furthering relationships with his Chinese counterparts and key industry players, while Champagne works to promote the use of Canadian lumber in home construction.

Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr will travel to China in June with forestry leaders to further look for new markets.

This broad diplomatic push comes as the U.S. looks set to impose new duties on Canadian softwood.

September 2, 2016

Joel Neuheimer, the senior director of International Trade for the Forest Products Association of Canada, said the last time the softwood industry faced duties from the U.S. — more than a decade ago — the push to find new markets in China paid off.

“If you look back to 2006 versus 2016, from a percentage point of view, we’ve really tripled our exports in forest products to the Chinese marketplace, going from five per cent of our exports to 15 per cent of our exports,” Neuheimer told CBC News.

That initial effort focused primarily on single-family home construction, he said, but looking to the future the effort will need to be expanded to selling lumber for the construction of larger buildings such as schools, libraries and apartment buildings.

“We’re looking at doing even more going forward, again taking into consideration what we’re bracing ourselves for here going forward with the United States and the harmful duties they’re about to impose on our wood products,” Neuheimer said. (Source: CBC News)

The Western Star, Corner Brook, Nfld., April 28, 2017

Saturday August 31, 2013 (Labour Day Weekend)

Graeme MacKay Illustration for Saturday, August 31, 2013 in The Hamilton Spectator

Is Labour Day still every day for women at home?

“Ask of me anything but doing the laundry.” – Napoleon

True, history suggests the diminutive dictator said to ask of him anything but time, but surely that was code for housework.

Times have changed from the days when men left all the chores to women while they brought home the bacon and conquered nations.

Isn’t it true that the division of labour in the home is no longer so imbalanced?

As a sociologist might put it, the answer is yes and no.

A Statistics Canada study says that between 1998 and 2010 men increased the time they spent on home chores by an hour in a given day, while women’s housework time remained constant.

And yet it found that Canadian women still do at least an hour more chores per day then men.

Moreover, women working full time spend nearly twice as much time caring for their children.

So is the egalitarian glass half-full or half-empty? Or should we measure using a smaller glass?

It bears noting that housework for both genders has decreased overall compared to the 1960s, in part due to such things as affordable home appliances, easier to prepare meals and paid home cleaners.

But chores continue to be mostly handled by women. Friction over the imbalance can doom a couple.

“The division of labour in and of itself can torpedo a marriage,” said Gary Direnfield, a Hamilton social worker and author of Marriage Rescue.

“And it’s not necessarily who is doing the laundry but how we feel about who is doing it. We take that as a statement on the relationship, attach meaning to these chores and fight over what we believe it means.”

Women’s lives have been transformed in the past 50 years, McMaster University sociologist Melanie Heath wrote in an email from Paris where she is conducting research. (Continued… Source: The Hamilton Spectator)