By Barry Stagg
October 1999
There is an ironic story out of Ottawa that appeared in the National Post. This relates to an Industry Canada background paper that nominates Canada for international status as an economic hinterland if present tax laws continue to stand.
The irony, delicious but bitter, is in Canada, the nation recognizing that it is now about to inflict upon itself the hinterland disease that it deliberately spread out over Atlantic Canada. The biblical implorement to do unto others as you would have done unto yourself is apt here. By preventing the development of strong regional industries in Atlantic Canada, through tariff restrictions and through the frustration of great economic engines such as Churchill Falls, Hibernia and the great fishing industries that predated Confederation, Canada has restricted its own national development. This is the price that Canada pays for focusing its economic policy on making the two core provinces prosperous and making sure that industries in those provinces thrive.
To add insult to injury for Atlantic Canada, a sizeable segment of the elite in those two provinces, Quebec and Ontario, makes a good white collar living administering the government and corporate welfare system that was developed for Atlantic Canada as a limp replacement for the native industry that could readily have developed there but for the deliberate frustrations placed in the way of these industries by the national government.
It is neither naive, infantile nor stupid to state that the national economic policy of Canada has elected to treat Atlantic Canada as well as Western Canada as hinterlands suitable only for the maintenance of consumers, a cast of captive consumers fated to consume the products of central Canada whether they wish to or not.
If you choose to live by that particular economic sword then sooner or later the sword is either turned against you or other larger swords such as the international economy turn against you. It is ridiculous that Canada, a huge country with practically immeasurable reserves of national resources, has continued to be a laggardly social democracy lagging behind with the type of economic activity that is more comparable to small resource poor European nations where a form of state welfare economy has arisen to care for overpopulated areas where resources have been depleted.
It is through laziness and the deliberate act of smug, insular governors and bureaucrats that Canada has restricted itself. It is a throwback to the colonialism that begat Canada and is truly an indictment of the national politics of this country. Unfortunately, the national politics of Canada reduce down to a continuation of the colonial policies that were being authored quite naturally by the British colonial office prior to Confederation. The British, (surprise surprise) treated Canada as a colony. The Canadian government through various stages of development has decided to treat the nether regions of this country in the same way.
Inhibiting economic development in the east and the west was convenient to the centre but has now produced a country that, in personal terms, is kind of like Lenny in the John Steinbeck classic "Of Mice and Men". Lenny is big, kind hearted, strong as a bull and stupid. He is a very sympathetic character who sadly is mentally handicapped. Yet, economically we are plain stupid.
In our situation, Canada has recklessly and seemingly maliciously depleted resources in Atlantic Canada almost as if there is an administrative desire to eliminate resources so that the policies that are so obviously co-opted from resource scarce countries can be put into proper application in Canada. This is perversion at its utmost both politically and economically.
It is as if some administrator had come up with a plan for drought relief in the middle of a rich farming area. Unfortunately for the brilliant bureaucrat this is a rich farming area and drought relief is unnecessary. Thus Mr. Brilliant Bureaucrat along with his fellow worker Ms. Genius Minister decide that their plan is too good to be left unused. So, they go about designing a process whereby the water resources of the rich farmland are diverted from the farms, producing drought. Then their great drought relief plan can be put into place and they feel much better and nominate each other for the Nobel Prize for economics. That sounds a lot like Canada's economic policy toward Newfoundland and the fishery.