Farmers & labor is getting sick and tired of being told that Canada needs to be more competitive on the global market.
Being more competitive usually means only one thing ... cheaper.
The idea is that we need to move more goods, not limited to food products, to more countries. To do that, we鈥檒l have to produce those goods for less money.
Other countries are often able to produce them cheaper, for a variety of reasons.
In order to bring our goods into their markets we鈥檒l have to do more for less. And not just to be a player in the export market. Thanks to the availability of cheap imports, this also holds true for the domestic market.
A recent story in the Toronto Sun describes how China is getting ready to, with the help of a deal with Chrysler, export some of their more moderately priced cars to North America.
And by the way, the previous page of the same paper is dedicated to a story about Chrysler cutting 12,000 jobs across North America (1100 in Canada)! You probably remember China; it鈥檚 recently been in the news as the manufacturer of killer pet food and toxic toys. And now, we will soon be on the receiving end of their car manufacturing sector.
You鈥檒l probably be able to buy a made-in-China car for about $10,000 because the Chinese autoworker, according to the news article, will do the job for about $4 per hour. Those who want us to be more competitive should maybe be first in line to work for $4 an hour here.
We need to move away from the 鈥渨e need to compete at any cost鈥?kind of thinking, and wake up to the fact that Canada is a high cost country. We have universal healthcare and other social programs, a well-paid skilled labour force, and high taxes because our infrastructure needs to be paid for by a relatively small population spread out over a huge land base.
We also have stringent environmental regulations and high health and safety standards.
To maintain our standard of living, we'd be better off "isolationist"! Within 50 years the majority of countries will be nearing Canada's standards of living.
Competition is irrelevant, only effective livelihood of humanity, and personal growth, and endowment of learning, benefiting others, matters.
No human is more deserving of a better life merely because of their country of origin. There may be hereditary advantages, and legacies of more merit.... But a human compassion desires the best for all. It does not merely appropriate a nationalistic ideal that leaves at least 80% of the world in poverty, by comparison to any given "supreme" nation that is wholly unjustifiable, and unsustainable.
The majority of energy consumption will necessarily be a different form than common today, within the average life time, and likewise will be the standard of success, and national merit. The most world beneficent socio-economic factors will emerge from sheer necessity, or else we're all, or nearly all, dead from war or misuse of resources in some way, or our children would be.
Everyone benefits from greater efficiency of all the important health, and well being concerns, including job growth, and manufacturing quality, and availability, of progenitive goods. See the rise of the internet, and its attendant access needs, as a clear improvement of communication of needs, and world understanding, which are of ultimate potential of human well fare. All these important resources of information and health care etc. will propagate, and its folly to hinder it. in a national fever - this is true across the board of non-destructive resource access.
The wealthier nations will also of necessity be the transactors contributing to the increasing development of the, so called, 2nd and 3rd world(s). The forces at work incline us towards this, or a rebellion we are incapable of quelling, will cause the minorities of wealth, and majority of poverty, to overcome us in the 1st world, and then we'd be the 3rd world, so its better for us to help others, than to encourage privation which leads to crime on a world scale, by all parties, due to the fight over the extremes of inequalities.
Nationalistic excess is dying, and common human, and environmental concerns, -will- dominate, this is certain and necessary - we are not few and living in geologically formed caves any more.
50 years, a half a modern lifetime, is all it will take to forget the majority of these insecurities of nationality. It is evident in the increasing curve of development, demands and needs.
God bless.
Edit: I've here included a video (20 min.) which detail the current (as of not older than about 4 years ago) misconception of the developing world statistically, and how university students do significantly worse than monkeys at predicting these statistics, and the professors slightly worse than monkeys...
At the time of the statistics analysis, and the video, only Africa was 3rd world as an entire continent, and now, in the short time, <2 years since the video, even Africa is no longer being included in the "3rd world" generally, as far as statistical trends are concerned.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...
The video is rated 5 out of 5 stars on average by 1050 ratings at video.google.com (Hans Rosling, the presenter, is very intelligent and funny) It's a tough one. It would be good if there were such a thing as a level playing field, where every worker in the world were working under the same rules, eg Operational, Health and Safety, and Government regulations. Then competition would benefit us all (the economic argument is too much for this reply...).
But even in this distorted playing field work smarter not harder pays off. I worked for a mining company that had two similar mines one in a first world and one in a third world country. The first world mine employed around 200 people and was highly automated. It outperformed the third world mine that employed 3000 people, that couldn't be automated because the locals couldn't handle the training.
Specialisation is good too. Nokia has more than half its employees in Europe yet is a market leader in a mass produced commodity. I'm sure many Canadian companies are in that position too.
Then there's using natural resources. Canada is probably the only large country that has a carbon neutral electricity generation. So they can churn out Aluminum competitively. And the tourist potential of Canada is huge.
The problem will play out in the long run, if your exports don't match your imports then the value of your currency drops and exports are cheaper to other countries and imports are more expensive to you, both encouraging increased local production. The trick is to move toward the areas where the country is best able to compete. Maybe general farming isn't one of them - maybe you concentrate on maple syrup production. The kiwi fruit is a good example, it really is a chinese fruit but New Zealanders have better climate to grow it so they have a big export market. There's apricot farms in Tasmania that take advantage of the late growing season, they export fresh fruit to the world because nowhere else has the right climate to grow at that time of the year.
It's a big topic but I hope I've said enough that you don't think the situation is all bad. Every single thing that you said is true and the same thing is going on here in America.We also are a high cost country. A person making 100,000 dollars a year after you deduct all the taxes that one has to pay, income, property, sales tax etc. actually has about 50,000 to spend. There is absolutely no way to live on $4.00 an hour in this country.I can guarantee you the folks that are all about the global market and being "competitive" are not planning to work for $4.00 an hour.The quality of these cheap products coming in is of great concern to me. I killed one of my dogs with the tainted pet food and my grandson is currently being tested for lead poisoning from chewing on Fisher Price wooden blocks imported from China.You can't buy much that is made in America anymore and most everything is made in China.Do you seriously believe that the health of the people buying their products is a big concern to the Chineese? I don't.They don't even care a whole lot about their own people."Isolationism" means self reliant to me. We are far too dependant on cheap foreign imports, and to me that's a recipe for disaster. |
