Round thinking in a flat world
Recently, this nation of 1.1 billion people has become the darling of the western press. Its astonishing economic growth rate of 14 per cent a year, immense agricultural and manufacturing output, and burgeoning information and communications technology sector have whetted the appetite of every “flat-earther” who believes that expansion in one part of the globe necessarily generates similar developments in others.
In reality, the world is still round, and the horizon is farther than you think, especially from the Atlantic Canadian vantage.
Here, we continue to endure the antique conventions that limit the movement of goods, services and labour across meaningless borders between pathetically underpopulated provinces. As a result, our kids can’t get good jobs, so they leave. Our most innovative small businesses can’t get capital, so they die. Meanwhile, our local governments continue to polish the chrome-plated buckles on their “self-sufficiency” plans and “prosperity” agendas before heading to Ottawa for the cash that feeds the habit of economic self-delusion even as it pays the bills.
But don’t worry. Close your eyes, click your heels, and think of India. That’s what Steve Lund does. He’s the president and CEO of Nova Scotia Business Inc., the province’s chief marketing agency. “I’m in favour of increased trade ties with India,” he gushed in a news report earlier this month. “They have a middle class of 400-500 million people with lots of money.”
He also noted that while “there’s still plenty of poverty over there”, his cell phone and BlackBerry “always work very well in the country. . .And that’s not something I can necessarily say about Nova Scotia.”
Gosh, Steve, that’s just grand. My question is: What are you doing about it? In fact, that’s my question to every stipend-sucking, expense-account-bloated provincial and federal bureaucrat who has the temerity to travel half-way around the world on the taxpayer’s dime to confirm that Canadian technology functions very well there, just not here, thank you very much.
What seems to be missing in the brain trust of our assorted public officials and private boosters is the sad realization that Atlantic Canada is the shrivelled end of the appendix of the North American economy. Its standing in the world is miniscule precisely because its real economic potential and capabilities are virtually unknown beyond the 200-mile limit, where not even Europe looks for cod anymore.
In Mumbai, for example, the Port of Halifax is considered a backwater adjunct to the Port of Montreal – shallow, difficult to navigate, and ice-bound throughout most of the year. That nothing could be further from the truth doesn’t impress Indian shippers and manufacturers who cling to their belief that the long, tortuous route through the St. Lawrence Seaway is the fastest, most reliable East Coast route to the rich, fat heart of the American interior.
If the world has become flat, then we need some round thinking in Atlantic Canada. The barriers that prevent us from profiting from our own domestic marketplace must be dismantled. The crumbling transportation infrastructure we accept as a matter of course must be rebuilt as an investment in our global competitiveness. The information and communications technologies that we pioneered so long ago must be applied now to provide excellent employment for citizens of, and immigrants to, this region.
We must do all of these things before we can properly accommodate the new Asian trade. And time is running out.
India is not our next big trade opportunity. It is our next big trade challenge. It will take more than a wizard’s wand casting promising numbers and paternalistic platitudes to make the difference. It will take action – the sorcery of the fearless.
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March 28th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Magnificent post, Alec. There’s no question that our governments, which were designed to accomodate a horse-and-buggy era, suffer from a huge generational gap wherein they are totally inadquate to the needs of the vast new conurbations — an area where most Canadians dwell. However, when I read further down the page of your scribblings, I couldn’t help but notice that the horse-and-buggy age would suit the tech savey Stevey “boy” Lund just fine, so why move away from the flat earth theory?
March 28th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Have you noticed how often “flat-world” proponents yack about rural areas as if they are the drawback to the cities? In fact, the opposite is true, especially in this region. In the big, wild world of international trade, New Brunswick’s “cities” are villages. That’s the underlying message in Alec’s post, and it’s the right one. But I would add that “villages” can do a lot: raise children, provide communitarian services; pick up people who have fallen on hard times. It’s really only about how we choose to spend the money.
March 28th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Easy for you to say R. You’re probably single mum sucking off the tit of the state. . .what taxes do you contribute to cover your social plans??
March 28th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Thanks, Scott, for your wise wit. Thanks, Ruth, for your attempt to broaden the conversation. . .Wreckhuss, if you ever post to my blog again with such disrespect, I will shut you down
March 28th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Ruth;
Is this the same rural New Brunswick that John Ibbitson once called a bastion for bigots. You know, the very villages which he says don’t accomodate immigrants and who think halal meat is some sort of suicide bomber. So if you go by what Ibbitson says, there’s no question that rural villagers will pick up people who have fallen, just as long as they have the same coloured skin.
March 30th, 2007 at 8:20 am
I’d agree up to the point of “The barriers that prevent us from profiting from our own domestic marketplace must be dismantled.”
The idea that those barriers are in transportation is just buying into that Atlantica malarky. Do you honestly think that Halifax isn’t the port of destination because of the highways, which are every bit as nice as anywhere? They dock in Montreal because half their goods get unloaded there for the local market. And that half gets refilled with manufactured goods going to Toronto. The people making shipping decisions are not nearly so daft as to not know there’s a place called ‘Halifax’ and that they have a port. All these things are costed by people’s whose sole job it is to save the company money.
To add my opinion, the ‘obstacles’ are named Irving and McCain. As I posted at David’s site, the wealthiest 10% of New Brunswickers are the wealthiest 10% in all of Canada. That includes Ontario, that includes Alberta. So something far different is going on. The harbour cleanup in Saint John would have been paid for had Irving been forced to pay the same tax as in Maine, and the city would be wealthy beyond its dreams if it got what has been promised in Levis for their natural gas terminal.
And so of course now since they own the media and Saint John is flat broke everything is “oh those evil union city workers, they are just robbing us blind”.
New Brunswick corporations contribute the lowest percentage of corporate tax to the provincial government in Canada, and people are griping and complaining that a grant is being given in the Northeast where industrial investment is near zero.
At least during the pre industrial age in Britain they didn’t ask the Highwaymen what services could be built for them, and didn’t hinge their economic plans on the industry of those robbing them blind. As they say, power corrupts, and greed is limitless. If you think some potholes in a highway are the obstacles to be overcome, you haven’t driven much in the rest of Canada. Transportation is the LEAST of the problems.