Should America and Canada Have a Common Economy

People have always wondered what it would be like to step in the shoes of others – people that are completely different from them and see the differences and similarities in their lives. These days even countries are thinking of the same question. For example, what if, Canada started sharing its economy with the US? Canada and the United States have different economic systems even though the countries are geographically close to each other. In the economic continuum of planned, mixed and market economies, Canada has a mixed economy, and U. S has a market economy.

Generally speaking, Canadians and Americans are very different people. Creating a single economy could have disastrous effects on the lives of the people and should not be done. First off, with less government involvement Canada would no longer have the things that Canadians celebrate. Secondly, the switch would go down hard on the homeless people of Canada who would now not have the government help that they desperately need and in a colder climate like that of Canada, it would be very hard for them to survive with the new economy not helping them much.

And lastly, Canada already has the North American Free Trade Agreement which gives Canada, good cooperation with the United States and obviates the necessity of such a move. If the Canadian economy integrated into the American economy, the future of Canada would be destined to collapse because of the things that the people would lose. At the moment, Canada is a welfare state, where there are things such as senior pension plans, free healthcare and free education from K-12. If the economy converted, these would be no more.

That would lead to the start of these services being commercialized which would make the prices skyrocket (refer to figure 1). Cost of living would go up. Health conditions would deteriorate and the workforce would not be as skilled due to higher cost of education. Also immigrant and refugee population would drop. That will adversely affect Canada’s workforce. To sum up, the Canadian economy will suffer heavily. In the United States, the government, leaves much of the economy to the private sector and this leads to a higher cost of living.

To the homeless people of Canada this is bad news. First of all, Canadian homeless people live in a very cold climate where they have to buy winter jackets and such. With a higher cost, the homeless people simply cannot afford the all the things to survive winter and will have lots of problems. This would add approximately 300,000 homeless protesters that would go against the integration along with the others that want free healthcare back and would cause big problems to the government.

In 1994, The North American Free Trade Association started to be implemented and free trade started between Canada, America and Mexico. Canada has the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association) that makes Canada, United States and Mexico very good cooperative nations and together they have made the largest free trade area. [1] John McCain from the Republican party[5] said “Last year alone, we (U. S. ) exchanged some 560 billion dollars in goods, and Canada is the leading export market for 36 of the 50 United States. [2]

The countries have agreed to many things that they will do for each other such as strengthen the special bonds of friendship and cooperation among their nations, contribute to the harmonious development and expansion of world trade and provide a catalyst to broader international cooperation and many more things[3] NAFTA has created a very strong foundation for future and created good cooperation for the three economies. So why does Canada need to share economies? In fact, what Canada gets from it, is not worth the expenses and risks it faces during the transition.

So as a summary, making such an integration possible could lead to devastation, and a lot of struggle for the people. So this should not be done. Making the switch, takes away the joys that we celebrate such as free healthcare and makes big problems in the lives of people that depend on these services. This also raises the prices of the goods in the market making a problem for not only the common people but even more drastically for the homeless people of Canada. Also, due to NAFTA, we have very good cooperation with the United States. Is all this really worth the change? Are we going to get enough back by doing this change?