ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the World Product Mandates (WPM) option from a different perspective, namely its linkage to the policy environment. It focuses on direct aid or regulation to encourage WPMs is unbalanced and, in many instances, misdirected; instead, greater emphasis needs to be placed on indirect policies to spur specialised missions, especially WPMs, for existing and future subsidiaries. In the natural resource sphere, advances in new technology are creating a host of substitutes for traditional resource goods, with the future development of additional substitutes assured. Canada’s competitive firms and industries are also at risk in the current environment created from nontariff measures in the United States. From a continental perspective, direct measures to encourage WPMs are confronted by the serious risk of countermeasures by the United States. Foreign owned multinationals will assess a series of locational factors regarding the subsidiary’s potential in their decisions about their Canadian operations.
