Opportunity knocking

I'm not sure if there's a conscious effort on the part of both the CAW and the NDP to show the differences between the two groups. But if so, this should only help matters:

The Canadian Auto Workers union wants to make flagging sales of North American vehicles an election issue, president Buzz Hargrove said Friday.

The union says the reason North American auto companies are in trouble – and demanding concessions from their workers – is unfair trade rules that favour importers of foreign-made cars.

"The way to solve the problems of the auto industry today is to stop the imports from killing us or get the opportunity to export to those nations that won't let us sell our products today," Hargrove told CAW leaders on Friday.

Now, I'll agree with Hargrove that the federal government should be seeking to ensure that other markets are able to purchase Canadian-made vehicles, and I hope that'll form part of the NDP platform. But there's no justification at all for consciously reducing the choices available to Canadian purchasers. And that's all the more true when foreign-owned companies are going out of their way to invest in Canada, and when the domestic companies' problems are related so closely to their dependence on low-efficiency, high-price vehicles.

Which isn't to say that Hargrove is necessarily wrong to try to preserve the current position held by the CAW. But as with last week's effort by Hargrove to postpone any confidence vote, this appeal is one that the NDP should respectfully decline to agree with. And that in turn should help to dispel any Con claims that the NDP is too close to labour to appreciate the bigger picture.