After nearly two weeks, the Canadian Auto Workers dismantled the blockade of General Motors’ Oshawa headquarters at Judge’s orders, but not before CAW president Buzz Hargrove unveiled a plan that, instead of boosting Canada’s auto industry, would destroy thousands of Canadian jobs and decimate the industry. Meanwhile CAW action directly imperils future auto job prospects in Canada.

The blockade protested the closure of Oshawa’s truck assembly plant. Hargrove’s idea relates to this. Last week, he called on Ottawa to effectively abrogate NAFTA – the one thing that has kept the CAW plants in Canada making cars and its members at work. He wants to revert to the defunct Canada-US Auto Pact, something the CAW has spoken of fondly before.

GM sells about 230,000 light trucks in Canada each year. Under the Auto Pact, each auto company had to make in Canada as many trucks (and cars) as it sold, he argues. If the Oshawa truck plant closes, GM will make fewer light trucks here than it sells, he says. To keep the plant going, Hargrove wants Ottawa to impose obsolete Auto Pact rules unilaterally against our biggest trading partner.

What that really means is that Hargrove wants to toss many more autoworkers out on the street than the 2,600 at the Oshawa plant.

Here’s why. Last year, Canadian exports of automobiles and light duty trucks to the United States equaled $47 billion. The United States exported only $21 billion into Canada.

That’s right. We had a $26 billion dollar surplus last year. Over the last decade, our surplus equaled a staggering $362 billion. A stronger Canadian dollar and weaker sales suggest a smaller surplus this year, but still in the first four months of 2008 Canada boasted a surplus of $7 billion.

So let’s say that in this protectionist year, US politicians hear and echo Hargrove’s cry, and want each automaker to make as many cars and trucks in the United States as it sells – in others words, a trade balance with Canada and no $20 billion plus surplus and all jobs that go with it. That would happen in the blink of an eye if Ottawa violated both NAFTA and the World Trade Organization rules to impose the old Auto Pact.

Canadian companies would have to shut down over $20 billion worth of production – or whatever this year’s surplus would be – and throw thousands of workers on the street.

Hargrove probably doesn’t mean that. He apparently wants the Auto Pact applied only for Canadian producers that have a deficit and only in the vehicle type where they do have a deficit. We get to keep all our surpluses – some version of “fair” trade.

To sweeten violation of our trade agreements and get companies to comply, he wants more of your money to subsidize some of the highest paid jobs in the nation. Auto workers can earn nearly $70 an hour with benefits.

That’s not the only way CAW actions and talk endangers the future of Canadian workers. The judge, who ended the blockade, in an oh-so Canadian way, did some US corporate-bashing but also acknowledged that GM would suffer irreparable harm from the blockade.

What union leader or worker wants to do “irreparable harm” to an employer, like GM, already reeling in financial woe? The CAW’s action warns GM about leaving itself vulnerable to the tender mercies of the CAW by further investment in Canada or even plant re-opening. There are no better ways to ensure the jobs never re-appear.

Well, actually there may be. In addition to everything above, Hargrove wants “emergency tariffs” slapped on any company that doesn’t follow his Auto Pact dictates. That’ll go over big with companies thinking of investing in Canada because of its proximity to the United States.

If Hargrove gets his way, count the Canadian auto industry dead. The United States has a continental-sized market and can power ahead quite nicely without Canada. The reverse does not hold. Companies invest here because of our proximity to the US market and our open trade. That’s why CAW attempts to undermine NAFTA are so dangerous to its members.