Canadian trade is at a critical crossroads in its evolution. Which way it proceeds suggests decades of impact upon prosperity, energy and resource management, security, Western Hemisphere integration, even hegemony. With a recently regressing US/Canadian trade relationship (constituting 75% of Canadian GNP), relatively stagnant interprovincial trade growth and stalled external initiatives, research is of utmost importance. It, in fact, is all the more crucial given its widespread promise for similar trade situations throughout our rapidly integrating world. The Canadian context thus presents an extraordinarily compelling environment for analysis - not in just its own importance and immediacy - but as an opportunity to refine a recently developed and universally-applicable trade paradigm: mutual recognition.
Philosophically, my aim is born of a desire to seek creative means toward enhanced interaction and understanding among nations, per the ideals of J. William Fulbright. In the post-cold war world, where global influence is increasingly premised upon economic ascendancy over conventional force, trade has attained - and will maintain - a heightened significance. Through healthy trade relationships and the economic - and thereby, cultural - interaction they foster, we may excise the national “vanity” which Senator Fulbright believed led to war. By nurturing trade through the development of tools to facilitate trade can we honor the Senator’s revolutionary vision for global understanding.