Canada about to be dropped from G8

[phgnome]

Sometime this week, I read an article in The Toronto Star by David Crane, who said that the G8 is considering dropping Canada's status as a member country!!! Why this isn't in front page news is beyond me -- this is big.

The G8 wants to drop Canada because they said that our volume of international trade isn't great enough to influence the global economy AND that Canada's percentage of world population is not signficant enough.

In short, the G8 wants to drop Canada as a member country and bring in members such as China and India (who have in the ranges of 20% of world population and about 12% each of the world trade activity).

In response, the Cdn government wants to take the initiative to form a G20 committee, including developing countries like China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and other developing countries. This is a good idea, considering we may be left out of the global economy altogether.

The reason Canada is being left out of the global economy: approximately 80% of our trading is done with only the United States.

I've long been an advocate of trade diversification. I don't think that we should put all our eggs in one American basket. As we can see, the state of the US economy will heavily affect our own if we continue on this path. As well, I think NAFTA is a seriously bad idea because it stops us from achieving economies of scale in agricultural production and restricts our development in the capital equipment sector, which is a key component of capital-rich countries such as Canada (vs. labor-rich countries such as China or India). We are somewhat in the same boat as labor-rich developing countries and we can work with them and trade with them so that we establish some sort of equilibrium (in terms of the ratio between labor and capital).

There are so many niches for Canada in the global economy, yet we're holding back because of our self-imposed economic reliance on the US through NAFTA. Same with Japan. Same with Mexico.

I hate being blackmailed by NAFTA and forcibly reducing our efficiency in the ability to produce and making artifically inflated prices because inflation of the US forbids it from producing things cheaper (because they're a bigger economy, it takes the US a lot more effort and a lot more time to achieve economies of scale) and NAFTA binds Canada to be measured by those same means and sell our products for no less than their inflated prices. Thus, in foreign countries, we're unable to sell for any less than the US can sell it for producing those same products at inflated prices due to its high currency and exorbitantly high standard of living.

These are just some of my preliminary thoughts on this. Any thoughts from anyone else on this matter?