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On Saturday, he said that American negotiators “asked too much and offered too little.” Among other things, Mr. Carney said that American negotiators pushed to
by etc-hosts 25d ago
On Saturday, he said that American negotiators “asked too much and offered too little.” Among other things, Mr. Carney said that American negotiators pushed to roll back Canada’s efforts to promote Canadian and French language content in online streaming services, subsidies for industries like publishing and film production and even mandatory labeling in French, an official language in Canada, as well as English on packaging.
“We were close to reaching a comprehensive agreement with the U.S., but they made changes, including threats on French language and culture and Canadian culture that would never be acceptable for that reason,” Mr. Carney said in French. “That marked the end of that stage of negotiations.”
- epistasis 25d agoThis is so stupid. It's really hard to understand how such utter moronic behavior even gets proposed. The best comparison I heard for the cultural idiocy is that it's like asking for the US to end SEC football. And ending French language in Canada has about potential benefit for the US as ending college football would have for the Canada: zilch. There's so much stupidity going on in the US right now that voters don't believe it when it's described to them, because it's sounds like it has to be biased. This is an indictment against the voters, however.
- nostromo 25d agoNobody in the US minds that Quebecois speak French. The negotiations are because Canada taxes US cultural exports (movies, etc.) and gives that money directly to their Canadian competitors. It’s perfectly reasonable for any country to ask that their exports not be penalized with taxes, which is what Canada does to many US cultural exports.
- brailsafe 24d ago> The negotiations are because Canada taxes US cultural exports (movies, etc.) and gives that money directly to their Canadian competitors. Canada subsidizes U.S film production to incentivise the companies to use Canadian labour. It's the opposite of a tax, but there is a consumer digital services tax that's only been a thing recently.
- jorisboris 25d agoThe mandatory labeling is actually a big issue in Europe as well, it means German products can’t be sold in the Netherlands if they don’t have Dutch labeling and vice versa. Which creates a fragmented market.
- Gud 25d agoBetter than the alternative, with unreadable labels.
- anewhnaccount2 25d agoThe solution is that many goods have labels in many languages in tiny text. Almost unreadable for me!
- nicbou 25d agoFor Canadians, the alternative is the death of a language.
- polski-g 25d ago[flagged]
- BowBun 25d agoHard disagree. It is not standard in many parts of the world, it is the cultural identity of many places, and the costs and logistics of changing everything around the world would be asinine. Language is also sovereignty. On a more personal note, most of the great classics in all forms of art are not in English.
- christofosho 25d agoHey Polski, This comment is extremely prejudicial[1]. Not only is language a part of people's heritage and culture, which in itself provides value, but also what you've said is incredibly biased and also simply incorrect. For example, both Mandarin and Spanish have more first-language speakers than English[2]. Almost 40 languages have over 50 million speakers, each. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_discrimination 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...