Harper threatens Obama, either stick with your tade agreements or lose em!

[Joelcool7]

chocoloco said:
Who calls you "America's bitch," yourself's, internet idiots, or who?

The campaign for the presidency does occupy too long of time in America and causes a standstill in political progress (not that it is good already). I don't see it as good news for either country by breaking ties that would damage one of the strongest alliances in the world. I would suspect if the Canadian government pushes the issue hard enough Obama will respond positively and approve the deal. I believe that the Canadian government is doing something to make trade with the US more fair, good for them.

My biggest lack of believing this is I have a hard time believing Canada would want to have better relations with communist China than they would the US.

Well Canadians do often, but so do many people from other countries. The exact term "Bitch" is more used by civilians but we have been called puppet etc...etc... Their is a consensus globally that Canada does what ever the US wants, now I would argue our current Conservative Government is far from America's bitch. In fact the current Government stands up to the US every single time it becomes necessary.

You would be correct in that belief. Despite making the threat the Government has stated they have faith Obama will make the right decision and that the pipeline will be approved before elections unlike what the Obama administration is saying. Prime Minister Harper has stated many times that he objects to trading with China unless they improve their humanitarian treatment of civilians.

Trust me Canada does not want to trade with China instead of America (Not the Conservative Gov at least), but the opposition parties do (NDP/Liberal) and if the Government and our economy continue to suffer because of America breaking its agreements or hindering trade it becomes almost impossible to remain major trading partners with the US.

Fact is the Conservative Government is not able to stick by trade with the US if America doesn't stand by its agreements and incourage trade. Not to mention with the US economy still unstable and the possibility the US economy will continue to shrink they become less and less important to our countries survival.

In the end I don't think Canada really wants to ditch the US, Obama is forcing their hand. Its not like the Canadian Government hasn't been trying to maintain a relationship for years. This idea of replacing the US as our dominant trading partner has been around for half a decade and the Government didn't even think about the idea (Ruling party not opposition) until now. This shows the Canadian Government has really done everything it can to keep the trade partnership as it is. Even now the Canadian Government still has hope that Obama will pass the pipeline deal before the election and go back on his "Buy America" plans.

But in all honesty its very unrealistic to expect Canada to continue trading almost exclusively with the United States if the US shows no regard for Canada's well being.