Ottawa Citizen: Regardless who wins the U.S. election in November, Canadians will be holding more cards than we have in the past

Given the buffoonery of the U.S. primaries, the Nov. 6 election can seem  agonizingly far off. It will, however, be upon us before we know it. Then the  really interesting times will begin, for while we cannot vote for those who will  have a share of power in Washington, we can and must think about how to manage  the new cast of characters to Canada’s advantage. And not only will there be new  players in the White House and on Capitol Hill, but they will be dealing with a  different kind of Canada than in the past.

Don’t get me wrong: the odds today favour the re-election of President Barack  Obama. His margin in the polls, however, is far from commanding and a Republican  nominee such as Mitt Romney, with the ability to reach out successfully to  independents and even some Democrats, would be highly competitive.

But even if Obama wins, much will be different. He will appoint at least some  new cabinet members and other senior members of the administration, for example.  But most importantly he will now be in his final term, insulated from further  electoral calculations, at least where his personal future is concerned.

Furthermore while there will be new faces in both the House and the Senate,  the rancorous partisanship of recent years is likely to deepen.

All of this makes thinking about managing our most important economic and  political relationship complex enough. To those calculations, however, we must  now add the new selfconfidence that Canadians feel, the new choices they have  and the new points of friction with America.

Consider that Canada has become the darling of international economic  observers for our management of our fiscal affairs and banking system, and how  we emerged from the recent recession faster and stronger than any other major  industrialized country.

Contrast that with the continued weakness in America, the unresolved housing  bust, the stubborn unemployment and the continuing debt binge. Canada faces its  own economic challenges, such as population aging, household debt and poor  productivity growth, but does so from a position of relative strength, not  weakness.

Now consider the greater degree of freedom we enjoy in trade. For years  governments came to power in Ottawa promising to reduce our dependence on U.S.  markets, and those same governments left office with the trade dependency deeper  than ever. But as a result of continued American economic weakness and the rise  of industrializing countries such as China, India, the Asian Tigers, Indonesia,  Brazil and others, our trade dependence on the U.S. is lessening. In 2000 we  sent over 87 per cent of our merchandise exports to the U.S. In 2010 it was  about 75 per cent.

We are extremely unlikely ever to escape deep economic integration with the  United States in manufacturing, because we don’t make much in the way of  finished products in Canada. We tend to make pieces of larger products put  together via a complicated production system spread throughout North America.  Our relative degree of freedom to shift our production to other markets is  rather small.

Not so with our natural resources, however, and those resources are far more  likely to underpin our economic growth in the foreseeable future than  manufacturing, even though manufacturing’s future here is brighter than many  imagine.

Take natural gas. To date our assumption has been that our chief interest is  to become integrated into a seamless North American energy market, feeding the  consumers and industrial processes south of the border while importing American  capital to pay for the necessary infrastructure. Today, however, thanks to the  shale gas revolution, North America is awash in natural gas. The futures price  is a paltry $2.30 U.S. per thousand cubic feet and is forecast to stay low for  years to come.

Contrast that with the situation in, say, Japan where they have taken  numerous nuclear reactors off-line following the Fukushima disaster and are  filling the gap with, among other things, natural gas. Canadian gas sold in  Japan would fetch a hugely higher price there than in North America. Canada’s  trade interest, in addition to close and enduring ties to our chief market in  America, is in selling more to Asian and other rising markets, but we have to  build the infrastructure to get our products there. China and other  industrializing countries are driving the rise in value of our resources, which  we can sell anywhere.

Add to these considerations the diverging attitudes between our two countries  on things like immigration and the desirability of natural resource development  such as the Keystone XL pipeline, and Canada now finds itself in the unusual  situation of having more choices than ever before in its relationship with the  U.S.

Our degree of freedom is still mightily constrained, but it is real. Time to  start thinking about what to do with it.

Brian Lee Crowley is managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an  independent nonpartisan public policy think tank in Ottawa:  macdonaldlaurier.ca.