[Marc Montgomery]

I have to agree with 45jim posted much earlier. I can't understand why we cant build to our own designs.

Britain has done it- a small nation of roughly only double Canada's population and very limited natural resources
France more resources than UK- but again population similar to UK at currently 66 million
Japan- germany,Italy etc
All make unique cars, weapons etc that they export.

As pointed out by others, when you simply buy the licence to build another country's product, there is no innovation, no real added jobs, hefty licence fees which go out of the country..no real lasting advantage at all.

Should we mention the new shipbuilding programme? of the fighter jet issue?

I have many dozens of Canadian magazines from the war years, and up to about the 60s we made everything here, and I mean everything.

Yes we had GM, Ford and Dodge, (remember we also used to have unique all Cdn companies at the start of the auto age-just like we used to have Cdn Oil Cos) but these, at least GM and Ford were far more independent (from US parent) Cdn operations at the time.

It also seems that whenever a truly Cdn company starts to make it, it gets bought out and becomes a subsidiary of a foreign operation. Canada Goose is an example recently. CCM went bankrupt in 83 and the name now owned by Adidas and of course CCM labelled bike not made here, how about a wooden hockey stick ..Sher-Wood...made in China now..

I could go on at length on political subjects and all these Free Trade deals..which strike me after study as very bad for Canada- TPP, TISA, UPOV94, CETA and so on... most being negotiated in great secrecy.

But if so many other countries are making their own domestic products successfully one has to wonder what happened to us.