this is probably mostly about the canadian government trying to avoid looking like it's picking on mexico.

in canada, we neither have statistically large numbers of spanish speakers nor significant numbers of people with (recent) african ancestry (we're all africans...). our largest non-white ethnic groups are from south and east asia; everything's english/french bilingual, but if we were to add a third language, it would be cantonese or punjabi rather than spanish, which is probably something more like 8th. although we do have ethnic districts (i can think of sikh districts, italian districts and ukrainian districts, specifically) there is probably nowhere in canada where an urbanized spanish-speaking constituency holds any real political power. we have chinatowns and little italies and growing arabic neighbourhoods, but we don't have mexicantowns - although there is one in detroit.

so, the realities on the ground are very different, politically. the spanish-american political organizations that are so central to politics across the american south really don't exist here. our government doesn't have that pressure point. but, the neo-liberal left being what it is today, this government is exceedingly concerned about producing race optics that could be manipulated against them. there's a broad consistency, there, in going out of their way to ensure that they do not look like they're racist.

of course, i'm opposed to right-to-work laws - they certainly depress wages. while it's probably not constitutional for the president, or the congress, to pass a federal ban on right-to-work laws, it would certainly be a welcome, if surprising, step from the existing republican party. it's kind of a sandersesque barb, really: if you seriously want to help workers in wisconsin and michigan, it's one of the best things you can do. but it's hardly something worth taking seriously as an honest negotiating position. frankly, it would signal a dramatic spectrum shift, and out of a vacuum: nowhere are there republicans that are agitating for this.

further, it's disingenuous to draw an equivalency. labour law in the united states has certainly been moving backwards for quite a while and needs a course correction, but it is still not remotely comparable to labour law in mexico.

what canada is really doing here is trying it's best to not look racist.

but, what i wanted to talk about was the oil. the globe is not the wall street journal, but it occupies a similar place on bay street, in toronto: it's the paper of choice for torontonian investors, who, like in the united states, are actually pretty liberal, but nonetheless exceedingly wealthy. it's the paper of the laurentian upper class: the well-educated liberals that make up the country's elite.

so, it's not surprising that they forgot to mention the riots happening in mexico due to rising oil prices, as a consequence of the recent "market liberalization" undertaken in the mexican oil sector.

it's true that the mexican police are a violent force that works actively to suppress and silence labour, but suppression has it's limits and is only effective in the presence of certain conditions, the most important, in the mexican example, being the low cost of living in mexico. the storm troopers are useful and everything, but you can only keep wages as low as they are there for any measurable time frame by keeping down the cost of living, which requires controlling inflation. and, contrary to the reigning neo-liberal theory, it is not central banks that control inflation but ultimately the price of oil that does. so, the best way to control inflation is to control the oil sector.

i would like to see it move the other way: i would like to see canada renationalize it's oil sector, which is something we were moving towards in the 70s as a reaction to the oil embargo. we certainly have our own cost-of-living problems here that can be directly tied to lax and ineffective regulations around oil prices which ultimately just reduces to price gouging. but, whether the right-to-work position is genuine or not, we can be certain that nobody is going to propose stronger government regulations around oil prices.

what i'm getting to is that the fact that mexico has had such strong regulations around oil prices has been at the center of it's ability to depress wages: if you keep oil low, you keep inflation down, which controls labour unrest and in turn lets manufacturers keep wages stagnant.

so, what happens when you let the market set the price for oil, then? you get inflation, which creates labour unrest that in turn creates upward pressure on wages. that is actually what is happening right now, as this left populist mayor rides a wave of indignant mass protest over the inflation that the policy is causing.

this is creating a kind of a contradiction. as a leftist, i want to support both of these things: i want public ownership of resources and i also want strong labour movements. but, the best way to build a strong labour movement in mexico is to let the privatization process wreak it's havoc, as a kind of shock doctrine; conversely, a return to nationalized oil will no doubt just perpetuate further stagnant wages, and reinforce the status quo of mexico as the intentional laggard, in the deal. there doesn't appear to be a causal path right now to this ideal outcome of a strong labour movement in control of public resources. it's almost like you have to let mexico go through it's capitalist phase, first, and then have an indigenous middle class take control of it's own sovereignty.

but, on the note of shock doctrines: i'll note that i've also seen recent reports that mexicio is investing heavily in it's police force. this is actually not a brilliant conspiracy on behalf of the mexicans; if they want a return to an easier to control work force, they should just undo the privatization. you can't take people that are already poor, put through policies designed to create inflation and then suppress them with a paramilitary - you will get a civil war out of it, in some abstraction. but, that is what they appear to be doing.

as i've stated here repeatedly, the purpose of nafta was to give american capital a manufacturing option that would allow it to circumvent labour and environmental laws. market liberalization in mexico - especially in the oil sector - actually undermines the purpose of the agreement. but, we've seen a generational overturn bring younger people into power that have only ever understood the effects of the propagandist kool-aid.

market reforms in mexico will undo nafta on it's own - regardless of anything trump does or doesn't do. and, that's what the smart analysis really ought to be focusing around, here.

is nafta even sustainable?

https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/canada-demands-us-end-right-to-work-laws-as-part-of-nafta-talks/article36160015/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&