By Barry Stagg
May 1994
POWER PLAY
I chaired a panel discussion with Dr. Doug House of the Newfoundland Economic Recovery Commission in Toronto in late March. Dr. House was peppered with a lively series of questions both from fellow panelists and from the 120 guests at the breakfast Meeting which featured Newfoundland Trade Minister, Chuck Furey as guest speaker with Dr. House as the star talking head.
The queries put to Dr. House ranged over a wide area with everything from the state of affairs of the washrooms on the Newfoundland ferries to the perils of trying to sell Newfoundland salt beef in Ontario on to the possibility of transferring Newfoundland communications technology to Ontario. However, the most intriguing aspect that was brought up was the whole issue of Newfoundland - Ontario trade.
When I put a question to Dr. House about the possibility of establishing a Newfoundland trade liaison office in Toronto for the express purpose of promoting the increased trade of Newfoundland goods and services, he came up with one of the most interesting statistics I have ever heard about the state of Newfoundland - Ontario trade. Dr. House indicated that his best grasp of the present trading deficit between the two provinces was that for every $2,000.00 of goods and services traded from Ontario to Newfoundland there was $1.00 of the same flowing from Newfoundland to Ontario. This 2000-1 ratio amounts to statistical damnation. In stark mathematical terms it shows that despite all of the cars, refrigerators, boxes of Corn flakes and computers flown from Ontario into Newfoundland, there is an almost invisible trickle of trade coming the other way.
The solution to this terrible ratio is probably long past any stage where government itself can provide a solution. One of the answers Dr. House gave when asked about what government was going to do about a particular problem was that the solution to the problem lay with the assembled audience of business people. How right he is. The solution to correcting any trade imbalance between Newfoundland and Ontario lies with the traders and business people of Newfoundland and Ontario. One of the truly horrible products of the last 45 years of Confederation is a growth in the attitude among business people in both provinces that government must provide a solution to everyday business problems. Business people must look upon the 2000-1 trading ratio as a great opportunity to exploit the Ontario market for Newfoundland products.
Business owners need only look to the examples of Japan and Hong Kong to see that in virtually the same time period from Confederation (1949) to date these two massive international traders have built rich trading empires upon the simple format of bringing in raw materials and manufacturing finished goods and shipping them to busy markets. This is exactly the same stance that Newfoundland business and industry must take. Ontario business people looking to Newfoundland should look upon Newfoundland as the national version of Hong Kong or Japan.
Newfoundland is a large province with unlimited supplies of labour and land which is certainly a lot closer to the Ontario market and to the even larger American markets than either Hong Kong or Japan can ever be. Accidents of geography which have long been used to illustrate Newfoundland as being on the fringe of North American society should be turned around to picture Newfoundland in business terms as being poised like a primal trading lion on the very perimeter of the greatest trading market in the world. The change in attitude that this will require is the very revolution that Premier Brian Peckford talked about in the seventies. This is a revolution "between the ears". Attitude and pure gumption and the overall will to dominate and gain power over markets and circumstances were what led Japan and Hong Kong to their present superb trading positions.
Based on my observations the pool of intellectual capital that exists among Newfoundlanders and among those in Ontario anxious to do business with fellow Newfoundlanders is virtually unlimited. The ideas, the business skills and the energy to make things happen are there. What is required is a self-motivating attitude on the part of those who would be traders rather than servants. Individuals operating individual trading enterprises and making the best use of existing resources and opportunities can generate strong winds of change and create an economic power play to blow away, forever, the economic and social lethargy that is now wrongfully pinning a label of misery and despair upon Newfoundland.