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timun · 01-17-2023, 01:49 PM

^Buddy is playing pretty fast and loose with the facts.

E.g. his timeline with respect to CUSMA is non-sense, and I don't believe for a second the photo at 4:33 is "Freeland finding out about a bilateral US-Mexico agreement." His anecdote that Freeland was told "'The United States is going to proceed with this in eight days, with the Mexican. You have eight days to accept the original terms. If you don't: fine, you're on your own.' Seven days later Justin Trudeau signed," is a pure fabrication. In point of fact the Mexicans and Americans had agreed to a tentative deal near the end of August, 2018. Canada did not sign on to that deal under its original terms, and the agreement with Canada was not reached until September 30th, over a month later.

His remark at 3:20 that "all of those exemptions that Canada spent 40 years building into American trade law were jettisoned in the NAFTA 2 discussions," isn't true: CUSMA is really only a slightly reworked NAFTA. Canada still has pretty much all the exemptions it had before. His following remark, that "the only reason there's even an adjudication function in there isn't because of Canada, it's because Nancy Pelosi put it in there at the last second within the US House," is big stretch of the truth. The Trump administration did want to get rid of the dispute resolution provisions of NAFTA, but they were reinserted back into the agreement by Canada, prior to the Sept. 30, 2018 agreement. (see this USA Today article published Sept. 30: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...nt/1453244002/ "A dispute resolution process that the U.S. had wanted to scrap but Canada wanted to keep will remain in place.") It didn't even go in front of the US House until 2019. The House did tweak the dispute resolution process though, tightening up the language around the appointment of dispute resolution panellists. Under NAFTA the US used to just refuse to appoint panellists, making dispute resolutions under the NAFTA terms essentially moot, so Canada and Mexico would just go to the WTO instead (and almost always win, and the US would almost always ignore the WTO decisions anyway...).

The map at 5:17 is also pure non-sense. Montreal is coloured red to indicate the metro area "can't expand", but is very obviously just considering the Island of Montreal alone. Apparently bridges aren't a thing and suburbs like Laval and Longeuil don't exist... Boston is right on the coast and apparently can grow in "4-7 directions", but Montreal is on an island and can't grow anywhere. Hmm, okay...

01-17-2023, 01:49 PM	#3977
timun First Line Centre Join Date: May 2012 Exp:	^Buddy is playing pretty fast and loose with the facts. E.g. his timeline with respect to CUSMA is non-sense, and I don't believe for a second the photo at 4:33 is "Freeland finding out about a bilateral US-Mexico agreement." His anecdote that Freeland was told "'The United States is going to proceed with this in eight days, with the Mexican. You have eight days to accept the original terms. If you don't: fine, you're on your own.' Seven days later Justin Trudeau signed," is a pure fabrication. In point of fact the Mexicans and Americans had agreed to a tentative deal near the end of August, 2018. Canada did not sign on to that deal under its original terms, and the agreement with Canada was not reached until September 30th, over a month later. His remark at 3:20 that "all of those exemptions that Canada spent 40 years building into American trade law were jettisoned in the NAFTA 2 discussions," isn't true: CUSMA is really only a slightly reworked NAFTA. Canada still has pretty much all the exemptions it had before. His following remark, that "the only reason there's even an adjudication function in there isn't because of Canada, it's because Nancy Pelosi put it in there at the last second within the US House," is big stretch of the truth. The Trump administration did want to get rid of the dispute resolution provisions of NAFTA, but they were reinserted back into the agreement by Canada, prior to the Sept. 30, 2018 agreement. (see this USA Today article published Sept. 30: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...nt/1453244002/ "A dispute resolution process that the U.S. had wanted to scrap but Canada wanted to keep will remain in place.") It didn't even go in front of the US House until 2019. The House did tweak the dispute resolution process though, tightening up the language around the appointment of dispute resolution panellists. Under NAFTA the US used to just refuse to appoint panellists, making dispute resolutions under the NAFTA terms essentially moot, so Canada and Mexico would just go to the WTO instead (and almost always win, and the US would almost always ignore the WTO decisions anyway...). The map at 5:17 is also pure non-sense. Montreal is coloured red to indicate the metro area "can't expand", but is very obviously just considering the Island of Montreal alone. Apparently bridges aren't a thing and suburbs like Laval and Longeuil don't exist... Boston is right on the coast and apparently can grow in "4-7 directions", but Montreal is on an island and can't grow anywhere. Hmm, okay...