My wife and I had to go to a friend’s funeral in Vancouver last week and on the drive there and back and as we followed other cars and noticed licence plates, it seemed like we were seeing fewer American plates, compared to other years. We could be wrong, yet it just appeared to be the case.
Then, just a couple of days ago, Tuesday, I believe, I was getting some gas at one of the stations up on the highway, one that had eight or ten fueling pumps so, still being curious, I looked at the licence plates there. It was a good time since there was a vehicle at every pump, and they were all cars; there were no commercial vehicles.
Here’s what I found.
There was one motorcycle from Florida and one car from Alberta. The rest were all from here in B.C.
What’s going on? This is July, the middle of the summer, and our highways should have quite a few American tourist vehicles. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Now again, this is all very unscientific, but you know how it is, we have our opinions, don’t we!
So again, what’s going on?
Now it would probably be off the mark to jump to a conclusion with just a couple of looks at it, so I went back on Thursday, to the same station, to have another look. And this time, I was a little more scientific; I took a pen and paper with me.
The results? I counted 38 cars, all Canadian. Mostly B.C. and Alberta plates, but some from other provinces too. No American plates. Not one.
Now it can be said that there could well have been Americans within my count since they may have flown to Calgary, rented a car with Alberta plates and then, in my unscientific survey, might have gotten counted as Albertans. Absolutely correct. That’s why I know that my survey wouldn’t pass muster as scientific.
But you know what? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire! Which makes me think that even though my stuff wouldn’t ever be accepted by any survey firm as legitimate, there may still be a germ of truth in it.
So, still curious, I went back on Sunday.
This time, 42 cars, all Canadian. But this time, after my count was done and we were just sitting there, two American plated cars did drive through the service station property. One from California, another from Wisconsin.
So, of course, it isn’t that there isn’t a single American car among the rubber tire traffic on our highways, but I contend that there are far fewer than there used to be. And that is a detriment to anybody depending on car traffic for business.
So, the trade war with Trump is costing us Canadians.
But wait.
There is another question that matters here. Was the service station lot empty, or even short of business? Not on your life. It was so busy with Canadian-plate cars that you could hardly get through the lot. And that, friends and neighbours, is what I think is the bottom line on the trade war with the U.S.
Canada can, and will, get along just fine regardless of what any trading partner does with its trade policy.
Will we get along fine, fine? Better than before? I’m not saying that at all. But we will get along. And given enough time, when we have been able to adjust with other trade partners, other infrastructure within our borders and the elimination of interprovincial trade barriers, we might do much better than many people thought.
Canada has many of the advantages that the U.S. has: a reasonably decent climate for agriculture, many natural resources, including energy resources, a productive labour force, access to ocean ports and a host of other things.
As I read the news, I think we have a fair chance of good representation in Mark Carney. I hope he doesn’t cave to Trump, because we don’t need to. As I have said on many occasions, we can expect Trump to be tough, and we didn’t elect him; the Americans did, as they should have. Remember, we are one of only two countries that put retaliatory tariffs on American goods coming into our country. It was only us and China. So we can stand up, and we should.
I believe that my story on the licence plates above has some degree of truth. But Americans staying away from here will be short lived. We and they are joined at the hip. There will be little problems once in a while, this is just one of them.
Most Americans hardly even know that Canada exists, let alone get mad at us over an issue like trade when we haven’t even done anything to affect them. We haven’t cut off natural gas to the New England states, the southeast states or Florida, all of which use a lot of Canadian gas. We also haven’t cut off electricity to New York or Michigan. I can understand that something like either of those would upset them, and they may not want to come up here.
Trump can say all he wants about not needing Canada, but if we were to turn the taps off on several things, he would find out how much they need us. They need our resources more than we need their manufactured goods. We can learn how to make shoes and toaster ovens a lot easier than we can learn how to make potash and uranium.
