Joel Watson: Let's not go back to 'normal.' Because the old normal was bad
Canada is huge, why does “Normal” demand we cluster on top of each other in veal-fattening pen jobs and white-hot housing markets?
By: Joel Watson
As the pandemic eases across Canada, after a wave that did not bring out lockdowns or major restrictions, politicians, pundits and pedestrians are calling for “back to normal.”
Are they mad? Do they not remember what “normal” looked like? Have they learned nothing from more than two years of of lockdowns, supply chain disruption, trade embargoes, invasion and inflation? Or is it just landlords and big-city mayors selfishly concerned about rental and tax income who are stuck in the past? Why would we want to get back to the old normal?
Consider what we’ve discovered since 2019. We have learned that you can buy an entire bottle of wine for $16 instead of paying $16 for one glass downtown. Same for beer and scotch. Living in tiny condos sucks when you cannot take your massive dog to the park for their business and you do not have a backyard. You didn’t mind having no space in your home because you thought the pub down the street was your patio — until it wasn’t. Then you tried to use your kitchen because eating out was out and you grew tired of ordering in whatever cold stuff arrived late and expensive. In “normal,” Canadians had forgotten how to boil water and grocery stores had morphed into pre-made meal cafeterias. But then we learned to make bread, and it’s tasty, like much of the other stuff we found in Grandma’s recipe book.
Now this assumes you could afford a condo, let alone a house, because back in “Normal,” house prices were already stupid, driven by outdated planning that gobbled needed farmland to make developers easy profits building McMansions, in addition to modern monetary theory and lack of skilled labour. But then we learned that a lot of office work can be done remotely for the people privileged to work from a Mac, as acerbically noted by Joel Lightbound. If we work remotely, we could move anywhere and buy a house in a small rustbelt city, town or green countryside (if it had broadband access) and work and breathe fresh air.
The east coast saw an immigration boom from central Canada, reversing its aging demographic, and of course it did. Have we learned that every business does not need to locate in the GTA, Montreal, Vancouver or Calgary, and that living on top of each other is problematic in a pandemic? Zoom fatigue is absolutely a real thing but could the new normal not be fast rail from Peterborough for that weekly meeting in downtown Toronto instead of a return of “Normal” multi-hour daily commutes?
We learned that we had off-shored our economy so much that we couldn’t make PPE, vaccines, skidoos or much else. The supply chain woes weren’t just microchips, our food was held up at the border or left unpicked for lack of migrant workers. Even if we had factories, the Boomers had convinced everyone that trades and resource extraction were for losers and dirty, so we have orphaned entire generations without useful skills for needed and well-paying jobs. Neither the U.S. nor China was particularly friendly to us — hostages, canola, pork, pipelines, fentanyl and the rest — and just when Ukraine and Europe could have used our abundant grain and gas, we were reminded that “Normal” meant that we don’t build things in Canada, like export-enabling infrastructure.
Back to “Normal?” Why?
How about “innovative” or, dammit, even “visionary” instead of “Normal?” Canada is huge, why does “Normal” demand we cluster on top of each other in veal-fattening pen jobs and white-hot housing markets? Let’s spread out and connect by fast rail and broadband, reviving rusted-out small cities and towns. Let’s find ways to fill essential needs in the global economy. COVID and Chinese aggression taught us that critical microchip production is at risk. Microchips need lots of really cold water and power. Thunder Bay has lots of friggin’ cold water, hydroelectricity and an unemployed work force that could really use some investment to counter the crime and addiction problems plaguing that community. Instead of cancelling licence plate fees when nobody was asking, induce a tech company to start up chip manufacturing in T-Bay, where there’s room to build houses with stunning views and great fishing.
Build hydro transmission capacity from northern Ontario and Quebec because “Normal” meant their plants couldn’t ship surplus power. These will be good jobs that will drive energy rates down and competitiveness up in the rest of Canada. Open the all-season port at Churchill and with rail and pipelines, get grain, energy, potash and minerals into the global market that is suffering from Russian invasion, food scarcity and Chinese imperialism. Yes, we need to lower emissions because climate change is real, but no, it is not going to happen overnight and no, Canada should not cut its own throat while countries with less concern for the environment drill, baby, drill and invade their neighbours.
And, finally, instead of paying people to stay in their parents’ basements, incentivize them to go into the trades and sciences for a better future for all.
Return to “Normal?” Hard No. Let’s be awesome, innovative and visionary instead. Because normal had a lot of problems. And we can do so much better.
Joel Watson is a former soldier, a practicing lawyer and a historian whose research focuses on veterans transition, socio-economic change and global conflict. Between jumping out of airplanes, and being the lawyer who stopped the music industry from preventing music sharing, he reads a lot of Edmund Burke, harvests his own food and cuts his own wood. He’s also a father who wants a better future for all of our children.
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These 'feel good' pieces are fun to read. They are in a weird way reassuring -- sure we have problems, but a few common sense changes and they could easily be solved. But, the reality is often much more difficult.
Let's take the remote work point. Studies have shown that people can work in remote teams effectively if they have already built up a trusting relationship. But, if the default is remote (which is what a lot of companies are attempting) that can be really challenging. Let's see how this experiment plays out before we assume the future of cities is doomed. My purely anecdotal take is that grouping people together creates "happy accidents" -- informal conversations that occasionally inspire new directions or new ideas. At the industry level, that's why people in certain industries tend to cluster. At the individual level, you make connections across the industry that helps you build your career. At the industry level, you attract talent and the kind of supporting infrastructure needed to thrive. There's a reason cities exist. Remote work may change things, but to me the whole -- "everyone can work from anywhere" really undersells the importance of these networks.
But a lot of the other points -- high speed rail from Peterborough, chip manufacturing in Thunder Bay, all-season port in Churchill, reshored manufacturing of all kinds of goods -- all would appear to require government intervention to happen. Canada is a very small market, with relatively eductated and high wage workers. There isn't a great business case for a lot of the things proposed unless the government is willing to heavily subsidize and plan them.
High-speed trains from Peterborough? Have you seen how long it has taken just to get all-day GO service to places like Kitchener-Waterloo (hint -- it still isn't complete)? Chip manufacturing in Thunder Bay? If there was a business case, it would have happened. Given it hasn't, we're going to have to make it really, really attractive (think government "investments"). An all-year port in Churchill has been looked at for decades. It'll be expensive -- not only the port, but the required transporation infrastructure to the port. Guess who is paying for that? And, if Canada thinks that our trade partners are going to pay a premium for commodities like fossil fuels or grain because we're more ethical than Russia or Saudi Arabia, then explain to me how that happens. What's more realistic (and what's happening) is that those industries may have increasing opportunities in the global market, but require investment to get there (everything from carbon capture to transportation infrastucture). Guess what -- they want us (the taxpayer) to pay for those investments or at least heavily subsidize them as they know the global price for those commodities is determined within the global market -- there is no 'we're nice' premium.
So, let's call these what they are: calls for government subsidies that favour certain kinds of industries/work.
There is a school of thought that the only way a small market like Canada can thrive is through some kind of government intervention and, if we are going to do that, we need a strategic industrial policy instead of just focusing on creating an attractive business climate. I'm still mulling if I agree with that as government's ability to pick 'winners and losers' is not fantastic. But, the alternative as kind of spelled out here is to continue to favour existing industries that have the ability to lobby governement for effective subsidies without expecting anything at all in return.
A long comment (as usual for me) to point out that while this piece feels good to read (even to me!) making it happen would either require significant government (taxpayer) investment favouring specific industries and not require those industries to do anything in return. That's more of what we're already doing and I'm not convinced it's the best way forward.
He's right. And those of us who live out in rural Canada have known this for years. Unfortunately we live in a city centric country where policy is driven by people who didn't know any of this until the pandemic hit. Check out the colours on the electoral map for a clue. Now that city folks have been enlightened, perhaps they will start voting accordingly. I write this as I work from my home in the middle of 50 acres of bush a short distance from the shore of Lake Huron. And yes, I have 30up/5 down fiber optic internet provided by (one of) the local independent service providers at half the cost of Bell or Rogers. I know the tech support guy by name and wave when his truck drives by. I know the name of the guy who farms the beef I eat, and the lady whose eggs I buy at the end of her driveway. But I pay a premium for electrical delivery despite the fact I can see over 120 useless wind turbines from the end of my lane. I supply my own water from a well and treat my own waste with a self contained septic system. And I heat and cool with geothermal. So yes, let's not return to "normal". Let's start using some common sense. You will find a lot of that outside of the city.