While Prime Minister Stephen Harper is off on an Asian tour, looking to sell Canada’s virtues, one cannot help but wonder whether he is now leading Canada down the wrong, worn path? His marketing strategy, something right out of the 1980s, is to look for foreign direct investment to develop our Canadian resources. The logic that follows is that this will create jobs, and allow for our economy to continue on, just like we have done in the past.
On the surface, such logic seems irrefutable, except that this is what Canada has always been – a supplier of natural resources to international industrialists. From The Hudson’s Bay Company to CNOOC (China’s state-owned oil and gas company), international business interests view us as just a land of cheap resources to be developed elsewhere. And maybe, if we are lucky, we will be able to buy their inexpensive consumer goods, as is our colonial wont.
The warning flags of Chinese “development” projects are evident throughout Africa, where Chinese state-owned firms went in to develop these nations, but did so without local labour. Now, we have heard of this very thing happening in British Columbia, with a mining company looking for Chinese foreign workers only. Their surface arguments looked reasonable at first, until one learns of their partial-Chinese ownership. As evident in other countries, these workers will work under Chinese work conditions and standards, sequestered in work camps, and not contributing to the local economy. Where is Canada’s development in that?
The problem lies in our backward-looking ideal of a resource-based economy. We have only ever seen ourselves in this role as an exporter of commodities. We do have some limited industrial exports too, but many of these industries are remnants of our “golden decade,” when Canada industrialized in the 1950s. What Canada is lacking is true industrial and economic innovation. But foreign investment will not help with that, because such knowledge is power, and they will keep that for themselves.
The true engine of our economy is in small- to medium-sized businesses. They are adaptive and innovative, employ Canadians, and contribute to both national and local economies. Their products can be a little more expensive, which makes them difficult to export to an impoverished society, but the quality of product is always higher. And when these companies are no longer capable of changing and adapting to new market trends, they cease to exist, with limited impact upon an economy.
Yet, Canada’s governments have extolled the virtues of a corporate-based economic model for the last three or four decades, which has created a stagnant, non-flexible economy, incapable of adapting to change or of becoming truly innovative. Chasing quarterly reports, this corporate model has looked to profit from maximizing trends, which have negatively impacted our economy. Rather than innovating and developing new markets for our “value-added” goods, which are costly, they concentrated on cost-reductions to beat the market. This has led to higher levels of unemployment, and the destabilizing of our Western economies. And this mindset has left us economically vulnerable. Just look to Europe or the U.S. as evidence of what happens when one cannot change.
Ironically, we have been spared somewhat from the recent tumultuous economic events because of our commodity-based economy, but the question at hand is: What do Canadians want to be? Do we want to be leaders and innovators in a new world economy or do we want to just continue along the path set out for us, because that is what we are expected to be?
John Kennair is an international consultant and doctor of laws who lives in St. Albert.
