That $100 billion figure for lost intellectual property is the number that really hurts. We see the receipts for this in the Public Accounts (the government's annual financial report). Ottawa sends billions of tax dollars to researchers. But foreign companies often scoop up the final patents. We pay to invent the technology, and then we pay again to rent it back. That is not an innovation strategy. It is just a donation.
It’s worse than that. We have so few publicly traded tech companies because they are all acquired instead of growing in Canada. This is the way our venture capitalists position their investments. It’s no wonder there’s a brain drain.
As I reread this over a month later (see my other comment) I think that something is missing here.
Where is protecting our culture and retaining sovereignty, as well as national unity?
Obviously, Quebec is concerned about protection of the French language and French-Canadian culture, but language is a "trade barrier" of a sort with things like news, entertainment & music, internet content etc. - because there is a cost of translation and a minority cultural group will create content unique to its situation, experiences and knowledge that outsiders do not get.
There was a story about the end of translations of "The Simpsons" into Quebec French as opposed to European French - that the show had specific cultural references in the dubbed version, while in English Canada there are no such bits of uniqueness for us since we watch the US version... and we also watch the US version of Jeopardy with its US oriented content while other countries get their own show and content.
News is important - I watch CNN and read the NY Times and Guardian. We have the Post/Sun chain owned by US interests... which arouses suspicion sometimes. But it is hard enough for US newspapers to survive with the decline of print editions, and Canadians suffer and our democracy suffers because the news we get is often US oriented.
We now have to deal with independence movements in two provinces... and with weak national media, people will often only look at the news media that feeds into their prejudices and not necessarily get an honest or full idea of the facts, and certainly foreign governments or business interests can exploit this.
The key jobs of any national government/state is to do what is best for its own people, but to also protect itself from anything that will undermine its survival. Canadians often have a weak sense of our own identity because we mostly speak English and live right beside not only the planets most dominant English speaking country, but the most culturally dominant one. Canadians know far more about US history and institutions than our own - the Freedom Convoy people were confusing US and Canadian (British Parliamentary) systems because they were so ill informed. Ignorance like this is dangerous, because a country not only has to deal with external threats to its survival but that its own people can be turned against it by outside forces or special interests.
TACO. We saw it with Greenland again, Trump will cave in when faced with a serious challenge to his idiotic plans, but unless a country fights back or has leverage that it can effectively muster, delaying or caving in will not solve things barring US SCOTUS decisions.
China used its dominance of rare earths to get Trump to cave in. If Canada doesn't use some sort of leverage, we will make concession after concession. Canada erred in agreeing to periodic renegotiations of CUSMA, as each time, our weaker position means making more permanent concessions. There was a quote by a member of Trump's team comparing it to being a landlord with a prime property to rent, and it is best to do short term deals.
Canada does have leverage. Canada is an integral part of Continental defense of the US - which was the excuse for wanting to take over Greenland. But out of inertia or just not questioning our situation properly, Canada should recognize that the Cold War is over - the "tangible" threat of Russia or China invading, launching a nuclear strike or even conventional missile or bomber strike against Canada is miniscule or non-existent. Neither is not going to land troops, set up a mine or drill for oil in our Arctic waters or land. The North West Passage is not that useful except to get from the Pacific to the East Coast of North America - the passage north of Russia is better for getting to Europe or North Africa. Only really Canada and the US might use the NWP, and it is the US that refuses to accept it as an internal domestic waterway.
Canada needs to be more "transactional" with the US, and even other allies. If Canada decided to become neutral and isolationist on defense, like Mexico, we are not a tangible target for Russia or China - but we are an "intangible" target - Russia and China are mainly a threat in terms of cybersecurity, espionage and political interference, not actual physical military conflict.
I laid it out in some of my writing for Dominion Review - These 4 relate mainly to defense and the current issues with the US:
Delay is fine until the time is right - it will be easier if SCOTUS strikes down the IEEPA tariffs and a decision is expected soon, but the Section 232 tariffs on National Security are the key ones hurting us and they are not at SCOTUS yet.
I wrote this in an email a while back:
To defeat Trump, Canada needs to become more transactional, and use continental defense as a bargaining chip against the US. The Cold War is over and the main Russian threat to us is cybersecurity, not a physical attack.
But it also occurs to me that Canada needs to be more transactional with Europe and with Asian countries like Japan and Korea. We run trade deficits with these countries, and should work with them, but maybe we need to link trade to other defense related issues.
The Cold War is over. Other countries in the Hemisphere, like Mexico but also Brazil, play no role in Europe or Asia and have minimal defense budgets aimed at ever getting involved. While I was never an isolationist, maybe we Canadians need to think more like Mexico has traditionally been until NAFTA in terms of both the distance it kept from the US not being involved in fighting Russia or China. The point is to start with isolationism as a starting point, and only work with most allies if we get something concrete in return.
I often viewed Canada as having fallen into a natural position of always seeing ourselves as sidekicks, or team players… like Robin to Batman. We wanted to be on any team and never be left out. It wasn’t until 1958 that we agreed to NORAD, ironically under Diefenbaker, but I really see no nuclear war, nor any armed conflict or invasion of Canadian lands or waters, so we could actually be like Sweden was until recently if we wanted, and should consider that with only sharing intelligence or cybersecurity with allies.
Canada needs to have tougher laws on takeovers and mergers, and not be such boy scouts about them but to use laws on ownership and competition to extract maximum benefits and control for Canada.
China will have more control over the Glencore-Rio Tinto merger than Canada will have.
I have been an economic nationalist since I was a teen in the 1970s. I wanted to design cars, but with Canada's branch plant manufacturing, there were no top schools here for this, and certainly no jobs, since design and marketing was all done in the US, or overseas, even though Canada was a major manufacturer of cars.
That $100 billion figure for lost intellectual property is the number that really hurts. We see the receipts for this in the Public Accounts (the government's annual financial report). Ottawa sends billions of tax dollars to researchers. But foreign companies often scoop up the final patents. We pay to invent the technology, and then we pay again to rent it back. That is not an innovation strategy. It is just a donation.
It’s worse than that. We have so few publicly traded tech companies because they are all acquired instead of growing in Canada. This is the way our venture capitalists position their investments. It’s no wonder there’s a brain drain.
As I reread this over a month later (see my other comment) I think that something is missing here.
Where is protecting our culture and retaining sovereignty, as well as national unity?
Obviously, Quebec is concerned about protection of the French language and French-Canadian culture, but language is a "trade barrier" of a sort with things like news, entertainment & music, internet content etc. - because there is a cost of translation and a minority cultural group will create content unique to its situation, experiences and knowledge that outsiders do not get.
There was a story about the end of translations of "The Simpsons" into Quebec French as opposed to European French - that the show had specific cultural references in the dubbed version, while in English Canada there are no such bits of uniqueness for us since we watch the US version... and we also watch the US version of Jeopardy with its US oriented content while other countries get their own show and content.
News is important - I watch CNN and read the NY Times and Guardian. We have the Post/Sun chain owned by US interests... which arouses suspicion sometimes. But it is hard enough for US newspapers to survive with the decline of print editions, and Canadians suffer and our democracy suffers because the news we get is often US oriented.
We now have to deal with independence movements in two provinces... and with weak national media, people will often only look at the news media that feeds into their prejudices and not necessarily get an honest or full idea of the facts, and certainly foreign governments or business interests can exploit this.
The key jobs of any national government/state is to do what is best for its own people, but to also protect itself from anything that will undermine its survival. Canadians often have a weak sense of our own identity because we mostly speak English and live right beside not only the planets most dominant English speaking country, but the most culturally dominant one. Canadians know far more about US history and institutions than our own - the Freedom Convoy people were confusing US and Canadian (British Parliamentary) systems because they were so ill informed. Ignorance like this is dangerous, because a country not only has to deal with external threats to its survival but that its own people can be turned against it by outside forces or special interests.
TACO. We saw it with Greenland again, Trump will cave in when faced with a serious challenge to his idiotic plans, but unless a country fights back or has leverage that it can effectively muster, delaying or caving in will not solve things barring US SCOTUS decisions.
China used its dominance of rare earths to get Trump to cave in. If Canada doesn't use some sort of leverage, we will make concession after concession. Canada erred in agreeing to periodic renegotiations of CUSMA, as each time, our weaker position means making more permanent concessions. There was a quote by a member of Trump's team comparing it to being a landlord with a prime property to rent, and it is best to do short term deals.
Canada does have leverage. Canada is an integral part of Continental defense of the US - which was the excuse for wanting to take over Greenland. But out of inertia or just not questioning our situation properly, Canada should recognize that the Cold War is over - the "tangible" threat of Russia or China invading, launching a nuclear strike or even conventional missile or bomber strike against Canada is miniscule or non-existent. Neither is not going to land troops, set up a mine or drill for oil in our Arctic waters or land. The North West Passage is not that useful except to get from the Pacific to the East Coast of North America - the passage north of Russia is better for getting to Europe or North Africa. Only really Canada and the US might use the NWP, and it is the US that refuses to accept it as an internal domestic waterway.
Canada needs to be more "transactional" with the US, and even other allies. If Canada decided to become neutral and isolationist on defense, like Mexico, we are not a tangible target for Russia or China - but we are an "intangible" target - Russia and China are mainly a threat in terms of cybersecurity, espionage and political interference, not actual physical military conflict.
I laid it out in some of my writing for Dominion Review - These 4 relate mainly to defense and the current issues with the US:
https://dominionreview.ca/canada-must-become-transactional-like-trump/
https://dominionreview.ca/should-canada-go-rogue/
https://dominionreview.ca/canada-needs-to-rethink-both-nato-and-norad/
https://dominionreview.ca/canadian-defence-policy-playing-the-percentages/
Delay is fine until the time is right - it will be easier if SCOTUS strikes down the IEEPA tariffs and a decision is expected soon, but the Section 232 tariffs on National Security are the key ones hurting us and they are not at SCOTUS yet.
I wrote this in an email a while back:
To defeat Trump, Canada needs to become more transactional, and use continental defense as a bargaining chip against the US. The Cold War is over and the main Russian threat to us is cybersecurity, not a physical attack.
But it also occurs to me that Canada needs to be more transactional with Europe and with Asian countries like Japan and Korea. We run trade deficits with these countries, and should work with them, but maybe we need to link trade to other defense related issues.
The Cold War is over. Other countries in the Hemisphere, like Mexico but also Brazil, play no role in Europe or Asia and have minimal defense budgets aimed at ever getting involved. While I was never an isolationist, maybe we Canadians need to think more like Mexico has traditionally been until NAFTA in terms of both the distance it kept from the US not being involved in fighting Russia or China. The point is to start with isolationism as a starting point, and only work with most allies if we get something concrete in return.
I often viewed Canada as having fallen into a natural position of always seeing ourselves as sidekicks, or team players… like Robin to Batman. We wanted to be on any team and never be left out. It wasn’t until 1958 that we agreed to NORAD, ironically under Diefenbaker, but I really see no nuclear war, nor any armed conflict or invasion of Canadian lands or waters, so we could actually be like Sweden was until recently if we wanted, and should consider that with only sharing intelligence or cybersecurity with allies.
Canada needs to have tougher laws on takeovers and mergers, and not be such boy scouts about them but to use laws on ownership and competition to extract maximum benefits and control for Canada.
China will have more control over the Glencore-Rio Tinto merger than Canada will have.
I have been an economic nationalist since I was a teen in the 1970s. I wanted to design cars, but with Canada's branch plant manufacturing, there were no top schools here for this, and certainly no jobs, since design and marketing was all done in the US, or overseas, even though Canada was a major manufacturer of cars.
https://www.mining-technology.com/news/rio-tinto-glencore-merger-could-face-chinese-regulatory-hurdles
Rio Tinto-Glencore merger could face Chinese regulatory hurdles
Earlier this month, the two mining companies said they had begun preliminary merger talks, but offered few details on structure or assets