Jack Mintz: End the denial and admit it: Canada has a competitiveness problem<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe U.S. sets the pace for the world when it comes to innovation in information technology, additive manufacturing, energy and life sciences. A list of the world\u2019s leading technology companies shows they are almost exclusively American. No wonder a recent report from the University of Toronto and Delvinia found a brain drain of Canada\u2019s best young tech talent to Silicon Valley, the reverse of what was predicted in the aftermath of Trump\u2019s election. Clearly there is something in the U.S. business model for innovation that the rest of the world tries in vain to emulate. Jean-Claude Trichet, former head of the European Central Bank, said \u201cThe American economy is nothing short of a miracle. Your people\u2019s sense of daring, or a willingness to explore innovation, to take on risks is nothing short of breath-taking.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. has led the way in applying new technologies to fracking for oil and gas, revolutionizing the global energy industry. That has left Canada scrambling to adjust to the new reality that our sole customer for oil and gas suddenly became our greatest competitor.<\/p>\n
While the U.S. develops its resource base, Canada\u2019s long-standing ambivalence towards natural resources is mutating into unthinking, overt hostility in provinces such as B.C. and Quebec, especially towards oil and gas. The disdain for fossil fuels in these provinces originates in their plentiful supplies of renewable hydro power, a reflection not of their innate moral superiority but that geography blessed these provinces with the large differentials in topography hydro power requires. (Of course, Quebec and B.C. still depend on fossil fuels for a majority of their energy needs, especially for transportation.)<\/p>\n
Canadians assume their superiority in supposedly being progressively post-fossil-fuel extends to their superiority in providing government services. That doesn\u2019t stand up to scrutiny, either. Canada\u2019s points-based immigration system is admired by many, but its functioning partly depends on its borders being far away from migrants from poorer countries, unlike the U.S. and in Europe. It is revealing how our immigration system is now struggling to handle even a fraction of the inflow of illegal immigrants the U.S. has confronted for decades. Even the relatively small inflow of asylum seekers into Quebec and Manitoba over the past year has triggered alarm, outrage and a growing crisis.<\/p>\n
It is easy for Americans to admire the Canadian health and education systems from a distance, especially since they don\u2019t pay the taxes needed to support them. But do they provide good value? While Canada ranks high in spending on health and education, our outcomes are well below the OECD average since much of the spending is wasted on bloated bureaucracies and lavish pay for our pampered public servants and professors.<\/p>\n
The U.S. leads the world in generosity, regularly on display but rarely acknowledged in a world that delights in demonizing it. The U.S. role as \u201cthe world\u2019s policeman\u201d reflects its military clout and global reach, without which Pacific nations such as Taiwan and South Korea would not even exist today. Most anti-Americanism is reflexive and lacks a self-awareness of the security the U.S. provides. For example, in 1966 when France\u2019s Charles de Gaulle ordered American troops to be \u201cremoved from French soil,\u201d then U.S. secretary of defence, Dean Rusk, sarcastically asked \u201cEven the ones buried in it?\u201d American sacrifices are quickly forgotten, even by countries that owe their freedom to the U.S.<\/p>\n
A recent poll found 60 per cent of Canadians held a negative view of the U.S., up sharply since Trump\u2019s election. This is shocking. Apparently, we are letting our antipathy to the temporary occupant of the White House outweigh all the benefits from access to the world\u2019s largest economy, supplier of investment and innovative ideas, and guarantor of our safety. The world hardly needs more of Canada, if it comes with our short-sighted small-mindedness about the U.S.<\/p>\n
Philip Cross is a Munk senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. sets the pace for the world when it comes to innovation in information technology, energy and life sciences and leads the world in generosity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":578,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9058"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/578"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9058"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9119,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9058\/revisions\/9119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}