NAFTA And Canadian Autonomy

The significant twentieth century has made Canada, Canada. Several events in the 1900s have had a huge impact on the creation of Canada and Canadian autonomy. These events have put Canada through many stages and have created this great nation that exists today. A strong sense of Canadian nationalism has also become present in Canadians overtime (Marked, 2004), and the desire to become independent from Britain has only grown. For the most part of the century, Canadians felt proud to be British subjects rather than proud to be Canadian (Free, 2007). Throughout the twentieth century, this mindset had slowly changed. Through political laws and battles, through social events of the time, and through the economical hardships and profits, Canada has
NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), was the agreement that Canada made with the United States and Mexico in 1994, which stated that they could trade goods amongst each other without tariffs (Nafta, 2012). This greatly contributed to Canada 's economy, as these countries traded with each other even more. Even if NAFTA was only present in Canada for 6 years of the twentieth century, these six years were affected by it, defining Canada to what it is today. NAFTA has created many job opportunities for Canada, gave Canadians a choice and variety of goods to choose from, and generated economic flow within Canada (Markville, 2011). Also generating economic flow was probably the main economical occurrence in the twentieth century, the rise and fall of the 1920s and 1930s, leading up to the Great Depression. The mid 1920s were very beneficial and good to most of Canada. After recovering from the economic hard times from after World War 1, parts of Canada saw economic good times (Markville, 2008). People in Canada could afford many things that they could not before, and also had much more time for leisure activities because of all the technological advances of the time (Ascension, 2012). Then in 1929, the New York Stock Market had crashed and had started the Great Depression (Ascension, 2012). The Great Depression was a huge tragedy leaving many people in poverty and in bad times and bad conditions. This event definitely helped shape Canada to what it is today, as Canadians now know how to deal with these types of situations. The rise and fall had also helped Canada become more autonomous because it had recovered, fallen, then dealt with its problems on its own, with minimal direct help from Britain. Later on, Canada had also shown its independence by declaring war on Germany (during WW2) 7 days after