[LINK] "North-south ties"

[rfmcdonald]

Just in time for the 20th anniversary of the controversial signing of the "Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, journalist Neil Reynolds has an article in The Globe and Mail examining the research of economist Robin Neill. Neill's thesis

As Canadian political economist Robin Neill observed a few years back, Canada was pretty well "continentalized" before Confederation. By 2000, he noted, every Canadian province - except Prince Edward Island - had developed stronger economic ties with the United States than they had developed with other provinces. Forty per cent of Canada's gross domestic product came from external trade, only 20 per cent from interprovincial trade. More than 80 per cent of the country's trade was with the United States; for Ontario and Quebec, it was more than 90 per cent. "By the end of the 20th century," he concludes, "the forces of history had formed Canada into a regionalized confederation with stronger ties to the rest of the continent than to itself."

Neill's website includes a detailed breakdown of this thesis region by region.