Relations between Canada and its neighbours were at the centre of a local town hall discussion.
Roughly 50 people packed a workshop room at the University of Windsor's Cross-Border Institute Wednesday for a discussion of the current NAFTA renegotiations.
Essex MP Tracey Ramsey introduced Andrew Leslie as the main speaker. Leslie is the Liberal MP for Orleans and the parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, Canada-US relations, and he had spent much of Wednesday in Windsor-Essex participating in several round table discussions concerning NAFTA.
Over the course of an hour, Leslie gave the audience an update on the NAFTA renegotiations currently taking place. He also took questions and comments from people in attendance who were both in favour of and against the free-trade agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico.
Trade between Canada and the US was at the forefront of the town hall meeting, with US President Donald Trump asking for a renegotiation of NAFTA to resolve trade issues he had campaigned on. Leslie says despite the rhetoric surrounding NAFTA, the relationship between the countries is very strong, down to a personal level.
"We want to keep all parties in NAFTA," says Leslie. "Our relationship between the United States and Mexico is superb. As mentioned during the talk I have about 30% of my family actually living in the United States, and that is not uncommon."
Leslie, a retired Canadian Forces Lieutenant General, spent much of his time in Windsor talking to business owners and economic experts, and he says they are surprised to hear about how pervasive the Canada-U.S. relationship really is.
"They're often surprised to learn that not only does Canada invest more in the United States than the United States invests in Canada, but we are their largest trading partner," says Leslie. "We are bigger than China, the United Kingdom and Japan combined. That often causes people to stop and think for awhile."
