Here’s a selection from the article:
In Delta, B.C., furniture company Prepac Manufacturing Ltd. abruptly announced plans last month to shut down one of its factories and terminate 170 employees. … The company was acquired by Toronto private equity firm TorQuest in 2019, and opened a new manufacturing and warehousing facility in North Carolina in 2021. Prepac plans to centralize its operations in North Carolina, leaving no Canadian footprint. Prepac was founded in Vancouver in 1979.
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at South Shore Furniture, a Quebec furniture maker. In early February, the company said it was cutting 115 jobs because of tariff threats, noting that 70 per cent of its products were sold in the U.S. and American purchasers have sought out merchandise from Asia because of the trade war.
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Another steel manufacturer in eastern Ontario – the Canada Metal Processing Group – said on Feb. 24 that it was cutting 140 employees because of the “actions by the United States” that will result in cancellations or delayed orders.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-layoffs-take-hold-as-trade-war-intensifies/
We have relied on America for one important thing, and that is defense. We allowed them to pressure us to abandon the Avro Arrow, and that essentially shut down any and every chance we had to take care of ourselves.
We’ve also ceded all choice in military spending to what America wants us to buy.
We have been lazy, and worried more about not offending America than doing what’s best for us. If nothing else the current situation has started to wake us up to that fact.
I don’t feel like you were accusing me specifically, but the shoe fits.
Subconsciously I think I thought we were safe in Canada. Too white, too much cultural and shared history. Sure we knew we had to separate ourselves but we could do that tomorrow and we had other problems today.
And like you said it’s been a wake-up. For me certainly.