Computing and Politics

[Jim W Lai]

On Sun, 28 Mar 2004, JoeHill wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Mar 2004 18:42:45 -0500
> William Park disseminated the following:
> 
> > > Sorry, but I thought the number one job was putting Canadian interests
> > > first :)
> > 
> > So, you're saying managing Canada's export trade to US is not Canadian
> > interest?
> 
> ...actually, they rely more on us buying their crap than we do on selling to
> them.
> 
> They complain about it constantly :-)

Time for some benchmarking.

Managing in this case includes keeping the American border open despite
homeland security concerns, and fighting trade disputes.
http://webapps.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/minpub/Publication.asp?publication_id=380810&Language=E
"Canada is the foremost trading nation in the developed world. Exports
represent 40.9 percent of our GDP, about four times as much in percentage
terms as the U.S. or Japan...

"Getting trade strategy right in large part means getting the U.S. agenda
right, since over 81.6 percent of total Canadian exports go to the U.S. and
69.9 percent of our imports come from our neighbour to the south...

"So keeping the border open, while meeting American security concerns, must
be our number one priority..."

So approximately 33.4% of the Canadian GDP is composed of exports to the USA.
Trade with Canada is will under 10% of the US GDP.

I suppose that dependency could be used as an unorthodox argument as to why
Canada adopt an open source operating system such as Linux rather than import
software from Microsoft.

Jim

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