The live cattle and beef markets of Canada and the United States are well integrated and highly interdependent, but in an unequal fashion. This paper assesses the role of trade agreements and domestic policies in increasing market integration and analyses the impact of remaining barriers to integration. In this paper, we use integration in the context of forming or blending markets into a whole. When the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) was implemented in 1989, tariffs on both live cattle and beef were reduced and within a few years many were eliminated. In 1996, the United States imported 1.5 million head of slaughter and feeder cattle from Canada, nearly a sixfold increase in the number of cattle imported prior to CFTA, which numbered 262,091 in 1987. However, live cattle imports are still extremely small compared to the U.S. market, with imports of live cattle in 1996 (carcass weight equivalent) constituting around 4 percent of U.S. beef consumption. The United States is a much more important market for Canada than vice versa, with 60 percent of Canada's beef exports destined to the United States in 1996, but only 16 percent of U.S. beef exports destined to Canada. As impediments to trade between Canada and the United States were removed, north-south trade increased. As the feedlot and packing industries in Alberta expand, it is anticipated that fewer Canadian slaughter cattle will be exported to the United States. In fact, U.S. feeder cattle may be exported to Alberta. Subsidies for beef producers in Canada have been significantly higher than for the United States, at times twice as high, although the level of support for beef and veal is lower than that for other commodities. Both the United States and Canada protect their domestic industries through tariffs, although this protection will decline moderately with the implementation of the 1994 Uruguay Round Agreement. Both countries subsidize their industries through provision of inspection serv
This article present a case study of the historical causes of interregional differentials in labour productivity which played, and still continues to play, an important role in explaining interregional and international differences in the amount of goods and services available per person. Possible causes are presented for the persistent and substantial differential in labour productivity throughout the period 1870-1910 favouring Ontario over Quebec manufacturing. The interprovincial disparity in labour productivity between Quebec and Ontario coexisted with a disparity in literacy and schooling. However there is no evidence that Quebec is still behind in quality of education while it still lags in productivity. Another reason for Quebec's lower productivity could be that low wages have had a negative impact on Quebec's development process by negatively affecting labour productivity while high wages have had the opposite effect in Ontario. Continued low wages could be a possible impediment to Quebec's capacity in catching up with Ontario.
Occasionally the policy world creates a “natural experiment,” where a striking series of events creates dramatically different before-and-after conditions that can challenge existing understandings of political situations and relationships. The Canadian Forces (CF) who are engaged in operations in Afghanistan have recently undergone such a natural experiment, experiencing multiple major changes almost simultaneously. The keystone that cemented all these was the change in their primary location of deployment: the move from Kabul to Kandahar in August 2005. What had begun as a complex peace and stability operation, of the kind that seemed familiar to Canadians ever since the cold war ended in the early 1990s, morphed into a classic counterinsurgency operation, of a kind that Canada had not seen since the Boer War at the turn of the last century.
Although religious congregations in the United States constitute a significant part of the nation's safety net (Cnaan, Boddie, and Weinburg, 1999), questions still remain: are religious congregations in the United States unique in their involvement in social service provision? To answer this question, we need to compare them with congregations in countries similar to the United States. Congregational social and community involvement in the United States is attributed to several factors: the unique separation of state and church, a pluralistic ethnic society, and the market economy of religion in the United States. If these factors explain the impressive involvement of local religious congregations in helping people in need and in enhancing quality of life in the community, then we should expect similar findings regarding congregations in other countries with similar characteristics.
The legal issues arising out of Quebec’s accession to sovereignty are to be seen in international law and in domestic law - that is, in both the relations between Quebec and Canada and the relations between Quebec and the rest of the world. Quebec’s accession to sovereignty may attract the attention of the American government, either to protect its own interests or because it will be called to intervene unofficially or officially by one or both parties.Clearly, in such an intricate political context, law would be of little help if it were to be considered in isolation. Political considerations have always to be intertwined with the enforcement of legal standards (when they do not directly contradict them). Moreover, much will depend on negotiations between Canada and Quebec, be it on the conditions for accession to sovereignty or on its modalities. Virtually everything is politically negotiable, legal standards serving here mostly as guidelines. The first considerations here are the legal conditions that must be met for Quebec to accede to independence; second, the legal modalities of Quebec’s accession to sovereignty need to be outlined.
