A cut rate Olympics? A way for Empire-nostalgic Brits to pretend the country still has any clout globally?
This whole thing made no sense until I realized that Canada produces more oil than any other country besides the US, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.
I was aware of that and so my question is why is this such a big deal to Canada? Do they have that much trade with Saudi Arabia? Wouldn’t Saudi students who leave just open up places for Canadian students?
Other than not wanting to become an enemy of another country why should Canada care about this? What do they stand to lose?
If it’s anything like the U.S., International students pay out-of-State tuition, which is a lot more at any State University. Also, Saudi students tend to be rich and spend lavishly on the local economy. Back in 92, we had a rich Saudi student come for one semester. He used to rent a new supercar every week.
Agreed on both counts. California loves it’s out of state/country foreign students for what they pay into the UC and CSU system. But, above that number in Canada was listed as 16k. How big a hit is that on an entire country.
According to NPR, the trade is worth about 4 Billion.
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/09/636998776/tension-escalates-after-canada-criticizes-saudi-arabia-s-human-rights-record
So the Saudi’s use a lot of maple syrup or something because Canada obviously must be selling something to them. Military hardware, technology, wood products…?
Just curious as Canada can’t be too dependent on Saudi oil. I know that not all oil is alike and with international trade just because you have a lot of oil it doesn’t mean you aren’t importing oil.
Yup. Its OUR bombs which killed 34 children on a Yemeni bus yesterday.
As the philosopher Megadeth once said: killing is my business, and business is good.
Just throwing this out there without context:
I’m proud of Canada - were i the Supreme Patriarch of the Church of the USA i would propose that we stop trading with all non-democratic governments.
We need a conventional weapons non-proliferation treaty.
I’ve been to Saudi a bunch of times on business. They give us engineering work (infrastructure design, overlap in expertise with oil industry leads to natural business relationships), and they also buy our military products.
Oddly enough, I felt as a Canadian that Saudis liked us, possibly because we weren’t the US. Guess that’s over :).
Everyone likes you until you call them on their bullshit.
There is one.The US has not ratified it.
Yeah I think just this week the Saudis bombed a wedding where the young bride was also killed (pictures available). They also bombed a school bus full of children, 29 dead. Add that to plans of a rumored Qatar invasion, and man, it’s like the nations are all worried and grabbing resources for ecological disaster in the near future. It makes me sad. Geopolitics is fun to talk about but only if you ignore human costs.
I’m confused by the Saudi leader. I thought he was supposed to be a reformer and loosening the insane religious restrictions on women and others.
He’s modernizing Saudi Arabia by secularizing the oppression.
The fact that he’s a “modernizer” doesn’t mean he’s not a nationalist.
The only people saying this were the PR firms and their useful idiots in the marketing operation he paid for on his ascension to power.