Canada’s destiny remains in North America
The U.S. president’s refusal to play by the established rules of the game is eliciting stunned reactions from all four corners of the globe. For a world that’s grown used to the banalities of so-called proportional responses and discretion from its leaders, Donald Trump’s antics are simply hair-raising.
This is especially true in Canada, where this electroshock therapy seems to have shaken us out of our torpor, or the cozy cocoon where we had found shelter, somewhere between comfort and indifference, leagues away from growth and dynamism.
In these pivotal moments, it’s important to agree on key principles and to be guided by a solid compass rather than playing it by ear. After all, as Nietzsche put it, he who has a “why” can bear almost any “how.”
I’ll suggest one cardinal rule: don’t lose true north. Ultimately, regardless of the tumult and the trouble, sharing a border with the most powerful economy and military in human history will remain for the foreseeable future, and doubtless much beyond, one of our biggest assets.
Gilles Duceppe, former leader of the Bloc Québécois and a surprising prophet for Canadian affairs, was fond of repeating that we have the politics of our geography. We therefore have every interest in embracing our own North American identity, and that which distinguishes us among Western countries. Our destiny has as its foundation a strong and dynamic North America, where it is still possible to build, to grow, and to prosper. That is the spirit of our more or less recent ancestors, who braved the elements and other difficulties in order to feather their nest in the New World.
The return of patriotism and of a strong desire to persist (to cite French poet Paul Éluard’s dur désir de durer) that we observe among our fellow citizens is commendable and undoubtedly necessary. But without a productive channelling of these feelings, we risk coming out of this misadventure inexorably weaker.
It’s not by beating our chests that we will bring about winning conditions for Canada, but rather by realizing that our opportunity to establish a certain balance of power is located on the economic side of the equation. As General de Gaulle put it in his unfinished Mémoires d’espoir, the efficiency and ambition of one’s policies are commensurate with the strength and hope of its economy.
Regardless of the tumult and the trouble, sharing a border with the most powerful economy and military in human history will remain for the foreseeable future, and doubtless much beyond, one of our biggest assets.
While some solutions to the crisis we are living through are simple, they will not necessarily be easy to implement. To put it bluntly: our politicians will need a little more courage than usual.
This moment in our history must give rise to highly necessary reforms, as much in terms of interprovincial trade as in terms of improving the business environment. In recent years, the competitive advantage Canada could boast about has been diminished considerably, if not completely eliminated, by the tax cuts introduced during the first Trump administration.
To reinvigorate Canadian companies, a corporate tax cut and a federal regulatory burden review panel should be imperative for whoever inherits the position of prime minister of Canada. The same goes for reducing individual income taxes, especially for the Canadian middle class which has been hit hard by the nightmarish economic experiments of the pandemic.
As I pointed out in a previous column, the increased development of our natural resources and their export to a wider range of countries—which, incidentally, are clamouring for them—represents one path to partial salvation for our economy. After all, the economic ties with the United States that I continue to see as a cornerstone of our prosperity in no way preclude us from trading with other countries, especially if they can offer us more advantageous terms.
In this sense, we should look to other liberal democracies in order to see to what extent we can strengthen our trade agreements.
All our governments will have to review the “little privileges” granted to various labour interest groups in order to allow a reorganization of labour on the basis of rationality and efficiency rather than the redistribution of sums extorted from the public with no real benefit. At the federal level, supply management comes to mind, an eminently regressive policy, while at the provincial level, an example is the reserved acts doled out like candy to professional orders. Taken together, all of these measures have exorbitant direct costs for the public and indirectly lead to economic sclerosis.
We have some solid assets: a very favourable geography, a reputation as a stable and honourable country, and an educated population. We might even allow ourselves to hope that the challenges we’re facing will allow us to once again properly value effort, which was once the key to human progress, as Olivier Babeau fiercely advocates in his excellent L’Ère de la flemme (The Age of Sloth).
Once the snow has melted and we have a new federal government, it will be time for a big spring cleaning. We’ll need to roll up our sleeves and put a little more effort into the task, a little more courage than usual.
Daniel Dufort is President and CEO of the MEI. The views reflected in this opinion piece are his own.