what is ontario's comparative advantage in construction materials?

to describe the scenario as "free trade" is to purposefully obfuscate the meaning of "free trade". what the ontario government wants is to protect the privilege of it's own capital to invest outside of the country. why should the united states facilitate this, given our reliance on their imports?

we can cry that it's not fair. perhaps it isn't. or, perhaps we've been utterly foolish in allowing ourselves to lose our productive independence.

i understand that these "buy american" clauses are potentially disastrous, and that the government has to do something about them. but, we need a deeper analysis of the situation, here. even if we can resolve this problem, it just kicks the can down the road. there will be another crisis, and another crisis after that.

conceding the potentially disastrous effects of these clauses should be generating a movement to rebuild our own industrial capacity.

nor does doing so negate the potential benefits of actual free trade, when we actually have a comparative advantage to exploit.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/ontario-premier-reaches-out-to-u-s-governors-to-win-allies-on-free-trade-1.3358953