ok, so, now that we're stuck with this, we want to support a low dollar to act as a tariff on goods into the country and make our exports more competitive. and, that means we want to transition out of oil, because we don't want oil rising the dollar up and making our exports uncompetitive and ruining our local industry.

so, it's a perpetual war between the east and the west, now. our interests are directly contradictory.

it may even make sense to dissolve confederation. ontario will be suffocated under a high dollar.

no.

seriously.

it's zero sum.

it is now in ontario's imperative interest to do everything it possibly can to obstruct albertan oil from getting to market.

i hope that ontarians, both inside and out of government, are pro-active on this point.

www.cbc.ca/news/business/canadian-dollar-rises-stocks-jump-on-news-of-tpp-trade-deal-1.3257089

Gary in NS
The only point that I agree with is kicking Ontario out of Confederation.

jessica murray
i'm not sure what the best way to do this is, but the observation is that alberta has a different set of economic interests than the rest of the country and that there really isn't an answer. the monetary union, in particular, just doesn't make sense. if the dollar goes up, alberta has to accept a larger responsibility in transfer payments. if it goes down, alberta has to consider possibly becoming a recipient.

probably the best outcome would be alberta joining the united states. what they want is parity. the usd is the petrodollar, after all. that would allow the rest of the country to deflate the currency to around $0.60, which would be optimal in competing in the tpp.

the oil is a burden to the rest of the country. it's going to stunt our growth, and force us to demand more in transfers - which i think we have a right to, considering that it's the economic impact of the oil that's stunting us. under the logic of the tpp, they would have a responsibility under tort law to compensate us for lost growth potential. but, of course, this is not optimal for anybody. what's optimal is decoupling, so the oil can no longer harm the growth potential.

i mean, they won't give us any kind of a deal on the oil, anyways. we went through this. they told us to freeze in the dark. we continue to import oil from the middle east. we'd be better off decoupling from the oil producing regions so we can grow our economy faster and then buying it nation-nation. that would actually give us more leverage.

so, i don't know how you do this. but i think that if everybody sits down and looks at the situation carefully, there's no way to conclude that confederation makes sense, under the tpp.