A fatal mistake we didn’t learn from

To the editor:

Hindsight is 20/20, or so the adage goes. Quoted frequently as recognition of past mistakes, it is useful only if it helps to prevent repetition.

Despite claims our economy is doing well, the vast majority of working-class people find themselves in less advantageous employment than was available 30 years ago.

Hindsight allows us to see where we went wrong.

It leads to an understanding that free trade agreements have been the catalyst to the destruction of a once robust economy.

Although Canada has been equally affected by the negative consequences of free trade, the sheer size of the U.S. economy allows for a more objective observation of its influence.

Having a domestic population of over 300 million potential purchasers, the U.S. had a built-in market for most goods produced in the U.S. Cars, computers, clothing, and most necessities could be supplied from within its borders.

Prior to free trade becoming the dominant condition, most citizens could find good employment making the products they would eventually consume. Higher wages balanced the higher prices required for industry to show a profit. Free trade allowed production to be moved out of country, thus destroying the incomes necessary to buy the products that were then imported for sale to the now unemployed and under-employed people.

This scenario had a predictable outcome. Although supported for a time through easy credit and spending of retirement savings, a point was reached where buying had to be restricted to the bare necessities.

That has created a downward spiral with no end in sight.

Rather than continue to make reasonable profits off domestic production that was a stabilizing feature of the old economy, ownership opted for enormous short-term profits at the expense of their long-term viability.

The Canadian economy suffered the same fate.

Many thousands of formerly high-paying jobs have been lost, replaced by low-wage and part-time jobs that fail to provide for a decent lifestyle.

Hindsight shows, unequivocally, that free trade was a bad idea. Undoing the damage may be impossible without further suffering by the masses.

Canada continues to push for more free trade agreements. It is obvious we have not learned from our past fatal mistakes.