[Leslie]

Given a choice, given the power to snap my fingers and make it so, given the ability to make the ideal the reality, I would make it so.

Canada would make goods made by Canadians for Canadians, and we would not do ANY business with ANYone outside of Canada.

Want our wood, come here and buy it in Canada.
Want our beef, come here and buy it.
Want our water, come here and buy that if you wish.

Want a car made in a car plant in Canada, come here and buy it.

Etc etc etc.

But business seeks out business. It's the nature of business.

Canada (and the US and several other nations too) doesn't need the trade from other nations external to it.
Look around you, consult a good atlas describing natural resources locations.

Canada, the US, and Russia are easily the most resource rich locations on our planet. Partly of course because our nations also know what's involved in the searching out of same.

We really don't need the trade, but yet we can't resist it.
A bad habit none of us seem to wish to break.

We produce resources so that we can sell the resources so that we can get the money to buy the very things we could have just made ourselves in the first place.

It's really quite crazy when you really look at it.

We are in a trap of our own creation.

And we further magnify it though clever hurdles.
We have so many unions.
The unions demand more money.
The businesses have no recourse but to charge higher prices.
Or in some cases, move to getting the product made elsewhere by non unionised cheap labour.

The end result. A unionised worker, that is slowly making himself a liability. The more we unionise, the more we encourage business to not even use the worker.
Yet the worker has not stopped needing a means of gainful employ.
The business has not stopped making the product.
But we are increasingly unable to afford it, if made locally by expensive unionised workers.
So our only recourse, is to take our money to the business that has scorned the unionised way, and had the product made off shore by non unionised means.
Thus the product drops in price, and it gets the sale faster than the more expensive local union produced item.

Unions are not some sort of "enemy".
But unions are indeed part of the "problem".
Part of the solution is to not permit ANY goods to replace locally produced goods.
Some will call that "protectionism".
Rightly so, it IS!

Until we alter the circumstances, the circumstances will remain.

What do you hate more, the business that will sell goods made by slave labour.
The consumer that will buy goods made by slave labour.
The unionised worker that insists on constantly being paid more and more, just because they have been there an increasing sum of time.
Or all of the above?

Right now, wargames appear to be a product I am actually able to say is made often closer to realistically.
I can point to Canadian companies.
I can point to US companies.
I can point to European companies.
All apear to be made in a way, that rewards buying locally.
They appear to be more expensive when bought from foreign sources.