I'm sorry but the Government of Canada; regardless of Party in charge, must be considered as "all talk, no action", until actions prove that theory wrong. We are effectively a US protectorate, and our sovereignty relies almost entirely on them. And we're living like that while running another $40 billion deficit with nothing to show for it.
Before that we were a part of the Empire. We don't have the culture or institutions to stand up in a complex and dangerous world on our own. We didn't need to, as long as those resources were harvested and shipped in raw form.
We have everything we need except the backbone and determination required to do things, while suffering from misfocused priorities......for reasons mentioned above.
Unfortunately, Canada as a mid power is no more. We have effectively been neutered by our present government, both diplomatically and militarily. The best we can hope for is to be reasonably well treated by the next global power. Depressing really.
I cannot rely on a government that makes its soldiers use the Food Bank to survive to make these investments. We are now an embarrassment to the world.
I fear that being a barely participating free loading protectorate will eventually frustrate and annoy the US to the point where maintaining the status quo won’t be worth its bother. We must pick up the pace as Michael Den Tandt makes very clear.
It all comes down to culture. It always does. We just don't have a culture in Canada where the institutions can be created (and nurtured) to take on these complex geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges head on. On paper we should, we are a large wealthy 40 million + country, but we have never had time to grow into it. It's go time and we need mentorship.
So how to grow the culture? Unfortunately our chattering classes, opinion leaders, Bay St., Ottawa, Calgary Oil Barons, etc. just aren't fit for purpose. We just haven't raised our leaders to lead something more consequential than a middle-sized power. Anthony Lacavera wrote a whole book on this, and has some great ideas to get us going.
How do we grow our elites and leaders for the new world? First thing, open up the economy and culture, Get rid of every and anything that protects any sector from the "big bad world." All of it. From media to dairy to even farming. Sink or swim. You can't lead without leading, and you can't grow if you are the big fish in a tiny pond.
What to focus on first? Blow up the home team protections our finance industry enjoys. That includes law and accounting. Our country was founded and built by bankers, lawyers and accountants, they are the apex of our economy, we need them to compete and be better. That will in turn beget a more healthy culture of defence, procurement, diplomacy, etc. because they will demand it. It's time to get rid of the Central Canadian parochialism, or Canada might not make it out of the 21st Century.
Too deep for most governments to get. The sad part is ; we have the brains , money , food , land , energy & youth to move forward. No obvious statesman/woman.
That's all for naught if one doesn't have ambition and grit.
In a country with a culture that frowns on anyone wanting more than their neighbors, and has the gall to state it in public, ambition and grit are seen as secondary values to conflict aversion and being nice. We've made our choice
It would appear the Bank of Canada at least partly agrees with you as lack of competition was one of the key factors highlighted in their recent 'break the glass' comments on Canada's lack of productivity growth.
What I think is key, though is some way to ensure enduring competition. Otherwise, we'll just trade off domestic oligpolies for multinational oligpolies. Truly competitive markets don't allow the leader/incumbent to simply use their size and market power to maintain their position. That's a challenge in Canada as we don't have the ability to, say, break up Amazon or Google. Breaking up domestic oligpolies and replacing them with multinational ones isn't exactly a step forward!
I'd much, much prefer the recent digital legislation focused more on the fact that a few monopoly platforms 'own' huge swaths of the market (content, data, advertising) as the issue rather than finding tiny ways to maybe squeeze off a little cash (dispensed through the government) to this impacted. Maybe if a couple of companies didn't essentially own every element of the online advertising market, content creators would have more options!
Reducing the barriers to entry and the impediments to new capital is the foremost thing you can do. A dynamic market is a competitive market, just look at how TikTok went up against Instagram.
One US Anti Trust did regularly before Reagan was bust up conglomerates. Standard Oil for example. Perhaps not allowing any player to have more than x% of market share could be studied further?
Canada on the other hand encouraged oligopoly. Big country with small population was the stated reasoning but I suspect the authorities prefered being able to meet with the leadership of whole industries in one room.
Change the culture from the root. Canadian business culture is not fit for 2024.
Just read Chokepoint Capitalism, and it's take is that US Anti-Trust shifted (starting under Reagan) from ensuring no company had more than 50% of the market (under the idea that consolodation concentrates a whole bunch of market power into a limited number of companies, with a bunch of undesirable spin-off effects, including regulatory capture!). Instead, they adopted the "Chicago School" thesis that all that mattered was consumer pricing -- monopolies and oligopies were acceptible as long as it didn't result in a relative rise in consumer prices. As the book points out, though, oligopies end up with all kinds of power -- over what they pay suppliers, wages, etc -- and the ability to lobby effectively for favouable regulation. Suppressing wage growth, even as prices remained relatively low, still had the impact of making things more expensive for most people!
As you point out, Canada has often taken the "we need to make domestic companies big enough to compete with multinationals" much to the same effect.
A lot of things the government is playing whack a mole with regulation may be due to simply not having dynamic, competitive markets e.g. monopolies in online advertising -- along with consolodation through leverge in the news business -- hurting our ability to access quality, competing, and different news sources -- might have been avoided if corporate concentration wasn't allowed!
Most of what the govt says will simply not happen — as is the case with previous defence policies since the time of Trudeau’s father. Unless the essence of the policy is to restrict security and defence by tying up allocated funding for years. That part will be very present and will continue to have a huge effect. A negative effect obviously — and one which will (hopefully just “may”) be the end of anything that resembles a viable defence capability.
Well written, with a definite sprinkling of global issue understanding , yet by a person who wrote speeches, for the worst PM & bobblehead VPM in modern history.
While the Yanks would probably defend our territory regardless of our military strength because it’s in their national interest, I believe that the stronger and more effective our military is, the more say we would have in that defence.
Just for clarification what are natsec thinkers? The world is a much more dangerous place than it was even 10 years ago. The US may protect us, but it depends, too, on what is happening there.
" Not implying that the US would invade"...our history says otherwise. My licence plate reads 1812we1 in honour of the bicentennial of that war. The only reason 'we won' is that Britain chose to defend what was 'theirs'. That was then, this is now. Uncle Sam is not a nice man.
The Americans are smart, they would come up through Alberta and Windsor, where the US cultural hold is strongest, and arguably even stronger than the Canadian one.
There is so much mixing between US and Canada in Southern Alberta and the Windsor area I doubt even the schools would be closed for the day if the US took over.
Agree, but there are some national obligations that we should meet if we want to be a country. Not implying that the US would invade, but we do have obligations to ourselves. We once took the obligation to protect ourselves and our allies seriously. It's kinda disgraceful to be a freeloader just because our neighbour is nice to us.
I'm sorry but the Government of Canada; regardless of Party in charge, must be considered as "all talk, no action", until actions prove that theory wrong. We are effectively a US protectorate, and our sovereignty relies almost entirely on them. And we're living like that while running another $40 billion deficit with nothing to show for it.
Before that we were a part of the Empire. We don't have the culture or institutions to stand up in a complex and dangerous world on our own. We didn't need to, as long as those resources were harvested and shipped in raw form.
We have everything we need except the backbone and determination required to do things, while suffering from misfocused priorities......for reasons mentioned above.
You forgot ambition. If you aren't willing to sacrifice for it then backbone and determination doesn't even matter.
Unfortunately, Canada as a mid power is no more. We have effectively been neutered by our present government, both diplomatically and militarily. The best we can hope for is to be reasonably well treated by the next global power. Depressing really.
We were on the path to being neutered long before this government. They just continued the trend.
I cannot rely on a government that makes its soldiers use the Food Bank to survive to make these investments. We are now an embarrassment to the world.
I fear that being a barely participating free loading protectorate will eventually frustrate and annoy the US to the point where maintaining the status quo won’t be worth its bother. We must pick up the pace as Michael Den Tandt makes very clear.
It all comes down to culture. It always does. We just don't have a culture in Canada where the institutions can be created (and nurtured) to take on these complex geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges head on. On paper we should, we are a large wealthy 40 million + country, but we have never had time to grow into it. It's go time and we need mentorship.
So how to grow the culture? Unfortunately our chattering classes, opinion leaders, Bay St., Ottawa, Calgary Oil Barons, etc. just aren't fit for purpose. We just haven't raised our leaders to lead something more consequential than a middle-sized power. Anthony Lacavera wrote a whole book on this, and has some great ideas to get us going.
How do we grow our elites and leaders for the new world? First thing, open up the economy and culture, Get rid of every and anything that protects any sector from the "big bad world." All of it. From media to dairy to even farming. Sink or swim. You can't lead without leading, and you can't grow if you are the big fish in a tiny pond.
What to focus on first? Blow up the home team protections our finance industry enjoys. That includes law and accounting. Our country was founded and built by bankers, lawyers and accountants, they are the apex of our economy, we need them to compete and be better. That will in turn beget a more healthy culture of defence, procurement, diplomacy, etc. because they will demand it. It's time to get rid of the Central Canadian parochialism, or Canada might not make it out of the 21st Century.
Too deep for most governments to get. The sad part is ; we have the brains , money , food , land , energy & youth to move forward. No obvious statesman/woman.
That's all for naught if one doesn't have ambition and grit.
In a country with a culture that frowns on anyone wanting more than their neighbors, and has the gall to state it in public, ambition and grit are seen as secondary values to conflict aversion and being nice. We've made our choice
It would appear the Bank of Canada at least partly agrees with you as lack of competition was one of the key factors highlighted in their recent 'break the glass' comments on Canada's lack of productivity growth.
What I think is key, though is some way to ensure enduring competition. Otherwise, we'll just trade off domestic oligpolies for multinational oligpolies. Truly competitive markets don't allow the leader/incumbent to simply use their size and market power to maintain their position. That's a challenge in Canada as we don't have the ability to, say, break up Amazon or Google. Breaking up domestic oligpolies and replacing them with multinational ones isn't exactly a step forward!
I'd much, much prefer the recent digital legislation focused more on the fact that a few monopoly platforms 'own' huge swaths of the market (content, data, advertising) as the issue rather than finding tiny ways to maybe squeeze off a little cash (dispensed through the government) to this impacted. Maybe if a couple of companies didn't essentially own every element of the online advertising market, content creators would have more options!
Reducing the barriers to entry and the impediments to new capital is the foremost thing you can do. A dynamic market is a competitive market, just look at how TikTok went up against Instagram.
One US Anti Trust did regularly before Reagan was bust up conglomerates. Standard Oil for example. Perhaps not allowing any player to have more than x% of market share could be studied further?
Canada on the other hand encouraged oligopoly. Big country with small population was the stated reasoning but I suspect the authorities prefered being able to meet with the leadership of whole industries in one room.
Change the culture from the root. Canadian business culture is not fit for 2024.
Just read Chokepoint Capitalism, and it's take is that US Anti-Trust shifted (starting under Reagan) from ensuring no company had more than 50% of the market (under the idea that consolodation concentrates a whole bunch of market power into a limited number of companies, with a bunch of undesirable spin-off effects, including regulatory capture!). Instead, they adopted the "Chicago School" thesis that all that mattered was consumer pricing -- monopolies and oligopies were acceptible as long as it didn't result in a relative rise in consumer prices. As the book points out, though, oligopies end up with all kinds of power -- over what they pay suppliers, wages, etc -- and the ability to lobby effectively for favouable regulation. Suppressing wage growth, even as prices remained relatively low, still had the impact of making things more expensive for most people!
As you point out, Canada has often taken the "we need to make domestic companies big enough to compete with multinationals" much to the same effect.
A lot of things the government is playing whack a mole with regulation may be due to simply not having dynamic, competitive markets e.g. monopolies in online advertising -- along with consolodation through leverge in the news business -- hurting our ability to access quality, competing, and different news sources -- might have been avoided if corporate concentration wasn't allowed!
Good article. However.
Most of what the govt says will simply not happen — as is the case with previous defence policies since the time of Trudeau’s father. Unless the essence of the policy is to restrict security and defence by tying up allocated funding for years. That part will be very present and will continue to have a huge effect. A negative effect obviously — and one which will (hopefully just “may”) be the end of anything that resembles a viable defence capability.
Well written, with a definite sprinkling of global issue understanding , yet by a person who wrote speeches, for the worst PM & bobblehead VPM in modern history.
While the Yanks would probably defend our territory regardless of our military strength because it’s in their national interest, I believe that the stronger and more effective our military is, the more say we would have in that defence.
BINGO !
Just for clarification what are natsec thinkers? The world is a much more dangerous place than it was even 10 years ago. The US may protect us, but it depends, too, on what is happening there.
National Security
" Not implying that the US would invade"...our history says otherwise. My licence plate reads 1812we1 in honour of the bicentennial of that war. The only reason 'we won' is that Britain chose to defend what was 'theirs'. That was then, this is now. Uncle Sam is not a nice man.
The Americans are smart, they would come up through Alberta and Windsor, where the US cultural hold is strongest, and arguably even stronger than the Canadian one.
There is so much mixing between US and Canada in Southern Alberta and the Windsor area I doubt even the schools would be closed for the day if the US took over.
See Austria in 1938.
Agree, but there are some national obligations that we should meet if we want to be a country. Not implying that the US would invade, but we do have obligations to ourselves. We once took the obligation to protect ourselves and our allies seriously. It's kinda disgraceful to be a freeloader just because our neighbour is nice to us.
So effectively, they've annexed us? You could argue that economically, they already have.
We might feel differently if they go full Christian Fundamentalist dictatorship.