Middle

Friday July 17, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday July 17, 2018

Mexico and Canada insist on NAFTA as a 3-way deal

June 29, 2016

Canadian and Mexican officials insisted on Wednesday that the North American Free Trade Agreement remain a trilateral pact  and reiterated their opposition to U.S. calls for a so-called “sunset clause” that could end the deal after five years.

After a meeting in Mexico City, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said they remained optimistic about negotiations to revamp the 24-year-old trade pact.

Talks began last August but stalled in the run-up to the Mexican presidential election. That was due, at least in part, to U.S. demands for sweeping changes in the auto sector and for a sunset clause, which would put the deal forming one of the world’s largest trading blocs up for renewal every five years.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the pact if he cannot renegotiate it to better serve his country’s interests.

Freeland and Guajardo struck an upbeat tone, with Guajardo saying about two-thirds of the agreement has been ironed out.

January 24, 2018

In Washington on Wednesday, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue raised the prospect that NAFTA could be negotiated separately with Canada and Mexico, in order to reach an agreement first with Mexico by September.

Although Mexican officials are heading to Washington this  week to meet with their U.S. counterparts, Guajardo stressed  that a deal between all three countries remained the goal.

“The fact that we are going to Washington to participate in bilateral talks is to reinforce the concept of the trilateralism of this agreement,” he said. “The essence of this agreement is trilateral, and it will continue being trilateral. (Source: CBC) 

 

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Tuesday November 7, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 7, 2017

Paradise Papers Are Another Hit to Justin Trudeau’s ‘Middle Class’ Agenda

There is a storm blowing in from Paradise. Documents leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reaffirmed what most of us already at least suspected: that the wealthiest among us have an elaborate shadow network of financial infrastructure in offshore tax havens to skimp taxes in their home countries. In short, rich people are playing by different rules.

September 22, 2017

The Paradise Papers are noteworthy for two reasons. The first is the magnitude. The leaked documents come from offshore tax firm Appleby, corporate service providers Estera and Asiaciti Trust, and business registries of 19 tax jurisdictions. They concern about $10 trillion (USD) overall, which is quite a lot of money considering that total gross world production for 2014 was about $78 trillion. We are talking about the global high rollers table here.

The second is that they meet CanCon requirements. Over 3,000 Canadians were named in the leaks, and some of them have connections to the commanding heights of the House of Commons. Even our beloved head of state Elizabeth II was named in the papers. Her Majesty’s estate has millions of pounds tied up in a rent-to-buy retailer accused of preying on the poor, which is a shock because the hyperexploitation of unlanded labourers is not something you associate with a feudal monarch.

April 6, 2016

The real meat of the report is how many of our former prime ministers are enmeshed in the financial heart of darkness. Leaked memos reveal Paul Martin’s former company Canada Steamship Lines is one of Appleby’s biggest clients, and Jean Chretien is listed as the owner of 100,000 stock options in an East African oil company ever having a bank account outside of Canada, and says he doesn’t know about the stock options.) And lest anyone suggest this was a Liberal family affair, it turns out that Brian Mulroney sat on the board of the company that facilitated the largest arms deal in British history to Saudi Arabia.

Juicier still than the has-beens on the list is the revelation that Liberal fundraising bigwig Stephen Bronfman has not only amassed nearly $60 million in a shadowy offshore tax haven, and that the law firm representing Bronfman had been instrumental in lobbying the Canadian government against cracking down on overseas tax evasion. Coming on the heels of two months of a taxation trainwreck—and a grueling few weeks exposing just how comfortable Justin Trudeau is with plutocracy—this is not a good look for the prime minister. Again, we reiterate: the optics certainly make it look like the extremely rich people around the federal cabinet table don’t actually have the best interests of the “middle class” at heart. (Source: Vice)