Canada – a Poor Nation in a Rich Country?

 

Last Spring I wrote a series of articles on Canada’s economic, social & political malaise. If you do an AI search using the latter phrase, you’ll see the data. In those pieces I contrasted the ‘Great White North’ with Singapore, that economic & innovation powerhouse that I’ve come to know & love. I proposed a series of countermeasures and a road map back to prosperity. Has anything changed since I wrote those articles?

Things have indeed changed since I last wrote about Canada – they’ve gotten worse. Trade tensions with the US have further degraded productivity, business investment, and our standard of living. Trade barriers within Canada remain impenetrable. Our debt & deficit continue to mushroom, and per capita GPD declines. We are officially in a ‘technical’ recession.

Canada’s economic malaise is bleeding into day-to-day life. Family formation & birth rates are at historic lows. Kids can barely afford rent; home ownership is an impossible dream. Violent crime & infant mortality rates are spiking. Healthcare? - don’t ask.  Even life expectancy is falling.

There is strong separatist sentiment in Western Canada and Quebec. Alberta will hold a referendum on sovereignty this fall. As for Quebec, if the front-running Parti Quebecois wins October’s provincial election, we’ll soon have a second sovereignty referendum. Alberta & Quebecois separatism is fueled by the strong sense that ‘we can do better outside of Canada’.

And yet, Canada remains a ‘rich’ country. We are endowed with one of the planet’s most magnificent & munificent land masses. We have pretty much everything Singapore lacks. And unlike Singapore, our cities & infrastructure have never been destroyed. Our people have never been imprisoned or enslaved. We are not surrounded by enemies. We have never been invaded by a merciless imperial army. We live next door to the world’s richest & most innovative market.

Singapore has become a rich nation in a poor country. Is Canada becoming a ‘poor nation in a rich country’? Anxious to deflect attention, our elites invoke the ‘ogre down South’, but even that tactic is wearing thin.

Clearly, something has gone badly wrong. Is Canada’s decline irreversible? What would it take to regain our historic tenacity, self-confidence & entrepreneurial spirit? (I provided a humble road map in my earlier articles.) I believe our PM is sincere & capable and wish him well. His thankless challenge is to clean up a decade of malfeasance and restore a once-great country.

I do not wish to be misunderstood. This gives me no pleasure, and I have no partisan axe to grind. Canada (and America) gave my family a chance at a better life. Am I not obliged to signal the growing gap between my native land & the innovation powerhouses I’m lucky enough to experience?

They say, the ‘darkest hour is right before the dawn’. Let’s hope so.

Best wishes,

Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption

E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org