Tariffs Tariffs Tariffs - What to do now.

 

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For as long as I can remember Canada has lived under the wing of the US. We’ve lived under the wing of their military and failed to develop our own. We’ve lived under the wing of their economy rather than diversify our own. To further exacerbate our present circumstance, we’ve permitted anti-"Americanism” to be a large part of our cultural mosaic. Then again, we have people who can do nothing more than denigrate Donald Trump. Our apathy and lack of preparedness, our smug righteousness with respect to our “progressiveness” have merged with our contempt to create the capacity for the US to bring us to heal and the willingness by many of our neighbours to the south to bring us to heal. Nobody wants to hear we’ve permitted this to happen, but we have.

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Where is the Energy East Pipeline, the Prince Rubert LNG facility and the respective infrastructure, where’s the Churchill Pipeline. The fact they fail to exist brings into sharp resolution the folly that has been carbon policy. While we've let inter-provincial squabbles and hyper-obstructive environmental regulation rob us of the opportunity to access the greatest energy market opportunity in history, our neighbours to the South have built the pipelines, have built the LNG plants and are now the largest exporter to Europe.  This folly has been offered up under the premise that if we set a good example the world will follow. A ridiculous notion that has been demonstrated errant by history itself.

Canada has a veritable treasure trove of human capital and massive inventories of raw resources. The challenge is our smart young people and capital are kept from merging to close the applied science gap. Further, we have allowed massive stagnation in our economy, that is to say, institutional inertia in government, and the lack of dynamism in our private economy, have resulted in low productivity.  These two challenges have been crystal clear for 50 years in varying degrees and several successive governments,  provincial and federal, have failed to tackle the issue. This is yet another aggravating factor in our present circumstances.

Whereas the growing demand for fossil fuels in the world will be met by Canada or someone else, Canada should ensure it is every bit as much a beneficiary as the USA or Russia or any of the other top energy producers in the world. Further and perhaps more importantly, if Canada fails to meet this demand producers of ill repute will meet the demand and they do so with no consideration for human rights nor environmental concerns. On this basis, I would suggest that under the banner of a national emergency, the two LNG plants are built on each coast and that the requisite infrastructure to support those plants is put into place. This should be a major initiative in the order of magnitude of our magnificent contribution to both world wars. The only way through this is to be bold decisive and forceful. We simply have to resist the temptation to succumb to the obstructionist elements in our country whose actions have clearly resulted in the loss of literally trillions of dollars of opportunities with no resulting benefit to the environment or any other social concern. This initiative is what will pay for all the other things we need to do to make our economy and country dynamic and independent.

While, our legacy industries, car manufacturing, energy, and the right resource sector, will always be critical elements of our economy, effectively our bread and butter. The dynamism that we need we need to flow from the grassroots of our economy. We need to get capital in the hands of our smart young people so they can innovate. We need to affect the circumstance where creative destruction is embraced rather than thwarted by captured regulatory realities. We need to streamline the flow of capital and due to the stagnation in the capitalization of entrepreneurship, there's a role for government to facilitate the capitalization of enterprise. There are a number of policy solutions Like the creative use of government deployment and augmentation of debentures and bonds. Large established industries can take care of themselves, our solution to the applied science gap and the productivity gap is a concerted effort in the distribution of capital to entrepreneurs.

Whereas every effort must be made to effect our independence and resiliency as a nation the United States has been our main source of prosperity effectively since our inception and whereas the present tariff circumstance is anomalous, and is the product of several domestic concerns on the part of the Trump administration we should seek to be as agreeable partners as we can and to limit negative dialogue. One recognizes that these ploys seem in such stark contrast to years passed that it would be easy to fall into a destructive bent. In light of this reality, we should immediately increase military spending to 5% or as much as necessary and focus our efforts on a domestic Defence Force with the goal of reaching a million-person military as quickly as possible. This would demonstrate our commitment to continental security, an issue mentioned repeatedly by President Trump.  

For too long now we have meandered along, we have failed to be prepared, we've allowed a deplorable degree of waste in governance, we've permitted a circumstance where government is effectively absent of any accountability. Our present circumstance, where by the US is effectively challenging our sovereignty, these realities have put us in a precarious position - so we have to stop doing it. Whether a bargaining position or a real play for our sovereignty, what this circumstance shows us is a vulnerability. What we have to do is to show a clear direction and not waver from that direction. I offer this with the following startling backdrop, that backdrop is, that 40% of our young people would vote to join the US if a few minor conditions were met. Perhaps the 1st order of business is to show these young people how lucky they have it. Perhaps all politicians have to stand in front the parliament building and read our Charter of Rights and Freedoms out loud, so the young people hear it rather than hearing a constant flow of scathing personal attacks.