[LINK] "Auto sector failure would deal a blow to Canada's GDP"

The National Post's Jacqeline Thorpe writes about how the economy of Canada is even more dependent on automobile manufacturing than the United States'.

"In terms of the hit to economic growth Canada is more vulnerable to any pare back in production on the auto side," said Michael Gregory, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets. "Employment numbers are smaller but as a share of total jobs Canada is even more exposed."

The value of Canadian auto vehicles and parts totalled $26.2-billion at the end of 2006, or 2.2% of overall gross domestic product -- the last year for which comparable U. S. figures are available. That compares with 1.3% for the United States if the figures are compared on strictly a value-added basis, that is the total value of the output of the sector, less the value of all the inputs.

Figures being bandied about the United States put the share of the U. S. auto sector as high as 4% of GDP, but Mr. Gregory said those tend to layer the raw material costs such as rubber, steel or electricity on top of the value-added cost.

The Canadian auto sector has dramatically shrunk, of course, since 2006, and now it totals about 2% of GDP.

As for employment, the Canadian auto sector totalled about 1.1% of the labour market in 2006 while in the United States they made up just 0.6% of total U. S. payrolls. Both have tumbled in recent years with Canadian jobs now totalling about 130,000 and U. S. jobs at about 732,800.

Mr. Gregory said the sales and distribution end of the auto sector is much bigger in the United States than Canada.

A recent report by the U. S. Centre for Automotive Research said that if the entire Detroit Three went belly up, nearly 3.0-million jobs would be lost throughout the U. S. economy in 2009 as vehicle manufacturing, parts and spin-off jobs disappeared.

The loss to personal income would be US$150.7-billion in the first year and US$398.2-billion over three years. The cost to government would be US$60.1-billion in 2009 or a total tax loss over three of US$156.4-billion.

No-one has actually crunched the numbers for Canada of such a doomsday scenario -- and it is highly unlikely the whole sector would collapse -- but the fact is the industries are inextricably interlinked.

David Paterson, vice-president of corporate and environmental affairs for General Motors of Canada Ltd., said at an editorial board meeting at the National Post yesterday that the Canadian industry is about one-tenth the size of the U. S. industry so the costs of total losses would be commensurate.

"We're about a tenth [the size] of their market so there is an enormous cost of doing nothing and we have moved past the discussion because of that " Mr. Paterson said.

Michael Bryant, Ontario's Economic Development Minister, and Tony Clement, federal Industry Minister, were slated to travel to Washington this week to gather information about the U. S. rescue package.

The Canadian automobile industry is located exclusively in the single province of Ontario, so the results of any shakeup will be relatively much worse than indicated above.

[BRIEF NOTE] We've a choice of Queen's scandals

It's not every week that I receive two E-mail from my alma mater, Queen's University, trying to deal with two public relations disasters.

The first of these E-mails related to Homecoming, a reunion at the beginning of the school year in September that is famous for out-of-control behaviour.

The riot is cancelled. In a desperate effort to end out-of-control street partying, Queen's University today suspended Fall Homecoming Weekend, one of its most venerable traditions.

"Something very precious and fragile is at risk--our hard-won reputation as a university," principal and vice-chancellor Tom Williams said in suspending the event for at least two years, beginning next fall.

This past fall's event saw a wave of violence, intoxication and mischief that resulted in at least 54 arrests and hundreds of tickets for public drinking and noise complaints.

Kingston police said the crowd, estimated at 6,500, was smaller than last year's, despite thousands of unofficial invitations issued via the Internet to students across the province.

Williams says that beginning next fall, the event will be replaced by May reunions, after classes have ended. The question is whether gate crashers will keep coming in September anyway.

"There will still be a football game," said Kingston police Insp. Brian Cookman. "Is that going to be a flashpoint for those who want to have a (street) event?"

Fall Homecoming Weekend is a decades-old tradition for the 167-year-old school. Between 5,000 and 7,000 alumni return annually to attend reunions, official dinners and receptions, and a Queen's Golden Gaels football game. Former students, some celebrating the 50th and 60th anniversaries of their graduation, parade around the field at half-time.

In recent years, however, student parties in the nearby off-campus housing district have overshadowed formal events, drawing between 5,000 and 10,000 young people to central Aberdeen St.

In 2005, the crowd rolled a car and set it on fire. This year, in late September, a customer at a Subway fast-food restaurant was sent to hospital in a coma.

He regained consciousness a month later with undetermined brain damage. A visiting Ottawa student is charged with aggravated assault.

"From 2005 to 2008, the notoriety of the event caught hold," Cookman said today.

"In the electronic age, with Facebook and YouTube, it is easy to reach across Canada and into the United States," he said. "It really (caught) us off-guard."

The second one, of much more recent standing, is the controversy of a test program whereby student monitors would watch first-year students for signs of various prejudices--homophobia, say, or racism--and try to guide the conversations and the students down the right roads.

A pilot program at Queen's University promoted as a tool to help students embrace diversity is being defended by administration and a student leader who say it's not an attempt to quash freedom of speech.

As part of its ongoing efforts to increase inclusivity, the university in Kingston, Ont., trained and installed six student facilitators to work with first-year students living in campus residences starting in September.

They were tasked with spotting "spontaneous teaching moments" concerning issues of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, ability and social class, and to respond - either actively by posing questions to spur discussion, or more passively through activities like poster campaigns or movies.

Such moments may very well occur in cafeterias or common rooms, and it's possible the facilitators might then step in, said vice-principal academic Patrick Deane.

"It's been suggested ... these people are expected to act as thought and speech police. It's exactly the opposite," he said.

"What they're there to do is encourage students not to censor each other, not to silence each other in different ways, but to have a respectful conversation and dialogue."

The distinction between public and private space becomes foggy within student living spaces, he acknowledged.

"In the residence setting, it's perfectly possible that students who are behaving in a manner that's disrespectful would have it pointed out to them," he said.

"(But) to suggest that they are in some way empowered to monitor the way students speak and call students into account for things they might have said absolutely is out of the purview."

Most of the time I'm glad to be a Queen's alumnus. Most of the time.

[LINK] Some Friday links

• Over at 'Aqoul, The Lounsbury confirms that Ayman az-Zaouahiri's description of Obama as a "House Negro" is as bad as it sounds.


• Centauri Dreams has a brief post describing the requirements for an interplanetary Internet and some possible solutions to such a network's technical problems.
  
• Will Baird carries the news that a gas-giant planet orbiting the star Beta Pictoris was imaged as early as 2003, but that it took a long time to properly analyze the data.


• Joe. My. God links to a Huffington Post analyst's suggestion that there is a positive correlation between secularism and progress. That's correct, I think, although "secularism" can mean any number of things.


• Strange Maps illustrates how the heavily slave-populated Cotton Belt counties of the U.S. South in 1860 map surprisingly well onto a map of pro-Obama counties a century and a half-later.