This paper is an attempt to look at the possibilities behind the federal government of Canada's proposal to create a new agency in the area of industrial export trade. According to the premises set down by the Government in its April 1980, Throne Speech, the initiative is primarily aimed at supporting small and medium-sized businesses in their efforts to penetrate foreign markets. It is natural for a government concerned with increasing competition abroad and rising unemployment in the industrial sector at home to start worrying about where industrial employment and overseas industrial markets are going to come from in the future. The wording of the Throne Speech and the policy studies undertaken prior to April 1980, regarding a potential national trading company seem to indicate that the Government had had the Japanese example of the trading house structure very much in mind, when closer study of such an enterprise was proposed, given Japan's thriving industrial sector and its successful export achievements. In the aftermath of the Throne Speech a Special Committee of the House of Commons was created in June of 1980 to further study the question of a future "National Trading Corporation." The Committee came down with its fourth and final report, Canada's Trading Challenge, in June of 1981, in which its basic recommendation after a year of deliberations was that "the federal government sponsor the development of a major Canadian trading corporation." This final conclusion by the Committee stands in direct contrast to evidence presented by witnesses before the Committee, and it seems to be an opinion reached by the Committee majority based on material and opinions obtained in addition to the briefs and the evidence gathered during the Committee's public hearings. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

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LD2668 .T4 1941 W71 / Master of Science

Over the past decade, the topic of globalization has infiltrated both public and academic debates. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate whether the growth in the discussion of globalization is justified by an equivalent increase in the interaction of economies. The focus of this dissertation is on economic globalization and specifically how it affects Canada. Evidence of cross-border 'flows' is presented in three parts. One, the trade of goods is traced from Confederation (1867) to the present, showing that contemporary levels of trade are not unprecedented. Furthermore, the data reveal that the bulk of the increase in Canada's trade since the Second World War has been with the United States. There are also strong indications that as the economy is becoming more service oriented, it will also become less trade dependent. Two, statistics on foreign direct investment (FDI) reveal that foreign ownership in Canada is at an all-time historical low. Three, the stock of portfolio investments (stocks and bonds) owned across borders is also not, historically speaking, at particularly high levels. Overall, when foreign direct and portfolio investment are combined, the data show that only a small percentage of Canada's wealth is owned by foreign investors and, likewise, only a small portion of Canada's wealth is located outside of its borders. Another claim found in the globalization literature is that the nation state is weakening or disappearing altogether. However, once subjected to scrutiny, this claim, too, is difficult to sustain. Government expenditures have increased dramatically since the Second World War and show few signs of abating. For the fiscal year 1996/97, government expenditures amounted to approximately half of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), indicating a general levelling of expenditures since the mid-1970s. More importantly, the globalization literature has unfailingly ignored the welfare-state side of government spending, arguably the most significant development in the political economy of the nation state in the 20th century. To bridge this gap, three sectors of the welfare state — education, health, and social services — are examined in detail. Lastly, an alternate explanation for globalization is put forward. Capital, it is argued, has made a concerted attack on the welfare state, utilizing high interest rates and high unemployment to discipline labour. Although having suffered a few scratches and dents as a consequence, the welfare-state has resolutely endured.

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This thesis begins with a review of the elite debate over free trade with the United States. It then uses a three-fold theoretical framework to formulate predictions of how mass opinion should line up. It then analyzes public opinion data on free trade through the use of crosstabulations. Using a theory of changing exposure to international trade upon domestic political cleavages formulated by Ronald Rogowski, it predicts that labour will oppose free trade because it is a scarce factor of production, and capital will support it because it is an abundant factor of production. It next uses work by, among others, W.A. Mackintosh to predict that respondents in the "industrial heartland" regions of Canada--Quebec and Ontario--will oppose free trade because it threatens to remove the protective tariff that rewards import replacement industries concentrated in those two regions. In contrast, residents of the "resource extracting and processing hinterland" regions—British Columbia, the Prairies and the Atlantic—will, on balance, support free trade because it promises to improve their export performance. The thesis then predicts that women and lower income Canadians will oppose free trade. Women because many of the services that they consume—health and day care, for example—will become more difficult to obtain under a free trade regime. Women will also oppose free trade because it may be threaten the service sector jobs that many women now hold. Lower income Canadians should oppose free trade because of the possible deleterious effects greater reliance on the market to allocate social services could have on poorer Canadians. Finally, the thesis predicts that better-educated Canadians will oppose free trade because it threatens one of the "core-values" of Canadian society: independence from the United States. Data analysis reveals, however, that opinion is remarkably balanced. For example, the difference between union and non-union respondents is only five percent. Regionally, the largest differences in support for free trade is between British Columbia and Ontario, but it amounts to little more than a twenty percent difference. Women are slightly more likely to oppose free trade than men; income appears to play little role in the formation of opinion on free trade. Last, differences in opinion between articulate and less well educated Canadians also appears to be insignificant. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate