The City of Temiskaming Shores is supporting a resolution that calls for leveling the playing field with the U.S., since its Buy American practices are harming Canadian manufacturers.
The Town of Halton Hills first put forward the resolution, which Temiskaming Shores is supporting. It calls for Canadian municipalities to only buy goods and materials from companies in countries that don’t impose local trade restrictions against products manufactured in Canada.
Temiskaming Shores passed their resolution to support Halton at a council meeting on May 19.
Local business owner Peter Birnie of the Wabi Iron and Steel Corporation says Temiskaming Shores “took a brave and positive step forward.”
“Those countries of origin that don't trade with us on that basis ought not to be able to compete on municipal and provincial work in Canada,” says the New Liskeard company president, who adds that 50 per cent of his business is exports.
“At the end of the day, it's not only the right thing for Canada, it's the right thing for the United States.”
Birnie has mounted a campaign to try and get the attention of governments and raise awareness of the harm he says protectionism causes.
“It's a bigger issue than just Wabi Iron and Steel,” says Birnie.
“We believe in a level playing field.”
American protectionism is already taking a serious toll on his company.
“This is having a negative impact and will result in layoffs in the very near future if this continues,” says Birnie.
International tensions over protectionism first escalated when, earlier in the spring, pipes from a Halton Hills company were ripped out of the ground on a Californian military base because they were labeled with the phrase “Made in Canada.”
Wabi has already been directly affected by American protectionism because it supplies Hayward Gordon, a Halton Hills based company located near Brampton, with pump casings they sell to the United States. Hayward Gordon is now being shut out of the American market.
Part of the Halton Hills resolution involves presenting it to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities at their annual meeting in June in the hope that other cities and towns will adopt it.
The Buy American provisions come at a particularly bad time, as the recession has led the government to start many infrastructure projects, which are being tendered now.
The policies first appeared in the U.S. Economic Recovery Act in February.
