4 - Wednesday, October 14, 1992 — North Shore News

Massive economic forces create Canadian conundrum

IF CANADA scems somewhat confused for an ‘tadvanced industrial state,’’ considering its awesome natural resources and the dynamic mix of its highly educated population, there are good reasons for this awkwardness.

Bob Hunter

The economic roots of Canada's current case of constitutional motor neuron disease go down to the bedrock of something so fundamental as the country’s tactical response to the entire process of industrialization.

In her thoughtful book, The Question of Separatism, Quebec and the Struggle over Sovereignty, Jane Jacobs notes that Canada’s traditional approach to economic development has been to exploit and export resources.

It is “a profoundly colonial ap- proach to economic life, but in Canada’s case, economic coio- nialism is not something forced upon the country, Canada prefers colonialism."’

The experience of Canada has been that the biggest and most quickly obtained fortunes, whether public or private, have been resource based: timber, coal, iron, nickel, cobalt, uranium, hy- droelectric power, potash, oil, natural gas, to name but a few.

Writes Jacobs: ‘‘Canada’s get- tich-quick experience with resources has shaped afl the coun- try’s major institutions: the na- tional government, the provincial governments, the banks and all the other financial establish- ments.”

While dazzling sums of money are available for resource ex- ploitation and vast construction projects such as pipelines, dams, refineries, bulk storage and depots, at-the most only a modest amount of risk capital is available for an improved solenoid valve or a new kind of woodburning stove.

Money for manufactuving and innovation? Capital for amall producers of the bits, tools, pieces and services required for a diverse economy? Ahem.

“To put it figuratively,’’ Jacobs writes, “if the Canadian economy was a z00, nothing would be pur- chased for it except elephants.”’

The country is not entirely without manufacturing, of course. But almost half of it is undertaken in foreign-, mostly American- owned branch plants.

When a Canadian manufacturer does manage to get started and become successful, capital can seldom be raised for expansion of the work.

“This impasse is typically solv- ed by the company’s selling out to a foreign corpoxation. It becomes a subsidiary.*’

This ‘‘profoundly parasitic ap- proach to ‘development’ ’’ means that Canada ends up importing humdrum consumer goods like hatchets and canoe paddles, as well as basic industrial tools, while blowing billions of taxpayers’ bucks on big-ticket white elephants like the Candu nuclear power system, which nobody in the world wants to buy. ~

In the unfolding constitutional disaster, we see that certain old economic chickens are coming home to boost the bank rate.

One of the results of the madly misguided but lifelong Canadian habit of self-arranged economic colonialism is that our regional cities have grown up primarily as service station centres for the ex-

Fundraiser to

THE WEST Vancouver United Church has scheduled a Saturday, Oct. 17, event to raise funds for and awareness of the plight of the millions of starving people in the African country of Somalia. .

The event has been scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. at the West

STRICTLY PERSONAL

ploitation of hinterland resources. They have some manufacturing, but not enough.

From Vancouver to Halifax, “by and large the regional cities of Canada do not serve as creative economic centres in their own right.

“They boom when the exploita- tion of their hinterland booms. They stagnate when the resource exploitation reaches a plateau. They decline when it declines.”’

This is devastating to the regions where resources yield less and less wealth.

Places like Halifax and Win- nipeg can no longer support the impoverished Maritimes or Prairies.

They don’t gcnerate enough new jobs or new markets to replace the fish and farms that are vanishing.

How Jong wil! Edmonton and Calgary boom when the oil is gone?

Now consider the special plight of Montreal: home to nearly one-third cf Quebec's people. Be- tween 1941 and 1971, an enor- mous wave of rural Quebecois moved into Montreal, turning it, before anyone realized it, into the national economic centre of Canada.

As long as it was the pre-emi- nent Canadian metropolis, Mon- treal lured — and held — so many English-speaking entrepreneurs and people with metropolitan skills, that it was functionally an English-speaking city. You could live and do business there.

Jn the late 1970s, Toronto over- took Montreal, becoming Canada’s largest ‘*‘connurbation,”’ meaning a constellation of cities and towns so economically in- tegrated they come to utterly dominate a region.

Montreal’s growth wasn't quite enough to create a connurbation. Result: migrants from places

like Medicine Hat or St. John started moving to Toronto instead of Montreal.

It wasn’t just that the popula- tion ratios changed, Montreal rap- idly became more distinctively Quebecois — even as it was being muscled aside economically by Toronto.

**The country has never before had a national city which lost that position and became a regional ci- ty,’’ writes Jacobs.

As Montreal ‘‘gradually sub-

help Somalia

Vancouver United Church, 2062 Esquimalt Ave., West Vancouver.

Tickets are $10 for adults, $8 for seniors, and $5 fer students and are available by contacting the West Vancouver United Church office at 922-9171.

sides into its regional role, it will decline and decay, grow poor and obsolescent.

‘‘No boom in resource exploita- ition can save it because — as a national centre — it had already surpassed what even the most prosperous Canadian regional cit- ies are capable of supporting.’’

In sum, Jacobs concludes that Montreal ‘‘cannot afford to behave like other Canadian regional cities without doing great damage to the economic well- being of the Quebecois,’’ almost all of whom, one way or another, depend on a thriving Montreal for jobs or at least sales.

But because Canadian bankers, politicians and civil servants re- main capiivated by the ‘‘siren songs of resource exploitation,”’ the special need of Montreal ‘‘to become a creative economic centre in its own right’? — a manufac- turing centre again, at least — will go, as usual, unheeded.

Getting the big picture? Like, economic forces, eh? AAA

The Name friends recommend to_friends

eo raced ey 926-6011 |

2407 Marine Dr., West Van.

Come and visit our Superbly crafted and

professionally staffed

Your Professional, Committed, Real Estate Expert

OFFICE 984-9711 PAGER: 645-9651 FAX: 984-3350

& No to special status for Quebec: f - Its senatcrs have a veto by double majority requirements. — - It has distinct society status.

py — it has new powers for its judges.

population, in perpetuity.

& No tc an ineffective senate:

B — There is no balancing power to Ontario or Quebec. @ — The senators are not all elected.

m — The Quebec senators have a veto.

mi — The senate cannot originate money bills.

€ — It cannot block legislation, only require a joint commons/senate vote which the Ontario-Quebec commons will dominate.

EB No to Ontario and Quebec having # 80% of the power in Canada.

i No to specia! rights for native people. &

3 — Indian self-government is racist and unequal to : : non-Indians.

Mm — The past is no justification for future discrimination. 7 m Support the Western Canada Concept's campaign for alm Mm Western Canadian "No!" vote in the October 26thi— mm referendum. Send your contributions to pay for more ads like fa - Mm ihis one to: The Western Canada Concept, 810 Courtney B

® Street, Victoria, B.C. V8BW 1C4. :

BEAVER LUMBER PROUDLY PRESENTS AMERA CUSTOM CABINETRY Introducing an exciting new concept in kitchen cabinetry, Amera Custom Cabinetry. Now you can decide upon every detail of your cabi- netry. Choose not just the color, but the wood itself. Select the perfect door style: traditional, contemporary, Euro-style and more. Design the whole kitchen to fit your personal needs. Or see us for assistance with traffic plan- ning, space management and- kitchen design. It’s all in your hands. Make the most of it with Amera.

There's something about Amera

AMERR

CUSTOM CABINETRY itchen Design Centre,

ocated upstairs in our North Vancouver store.

915 WEST iST ST. NORTH VANCOUVER

985-3000 9 Lower Mainland addresses to serve you