Its dangerous to draw conclusions from history that is too fresh, but I’m going to anyway.
Canada is a country with an essentially pre-industrial economy. What I mean by that is our economy is based almost entirely or natural resource extraction. Sure our extraction methods are more advanced today, but in essence ours is still a pre-industrial economy.
In other words this country is a one trick pony. This is fine when everyone wants that trick, like when commodity prices are high and demand is strong, as has been the case for several years now. But what happens when demand craters, and prices tumble, as we’ve seen over the past couple months?
Canada’s near complete economic reliance on natural resources is a dangerously precarious position, and one the entire country has willfully ignored while the good times rolled. Unfortunately the good times are over and no one know when they’ll be back.
This isn’t to say that low oil price mean the country is going backrupt. Rather it is to say that while times were good and money flowed out of the ground anywhere you stuck a shovel, we had the greatest opportunity we ever haveto diversify what we offer the world, and make sure those good times keep on rolling.
However we squandered this opportunity. Worse we as a nation do not even realize what we have squandered. And the consequences will likely be a slow unraveling or global relevance and economic prosperity.
It didn’t have to be like this. Canada has an incredible education system, and the kinds of cultural freedoms necessary to allow bright people to try crazy ideas.
Unfortunately Canadians are saddled with the most crushing complacency you’ll find anywhere. Your typical Canadian’s highest aspiration is to get a government job. Candian minds and spirits have been left fallow, and so the best leave while the rest remain to exacerbate the problem.
Canada should have the creative, cultural and knowledge industries to pick up the economic slack of crumbling commodity prices. But we don’t have these industries because the human mind is the one natural resource this country sadly couldn’t care less about.