Make Canada self-sufficient again

Last January, in response to a speech delivered the previous day by Prime Minister Mark Carney to the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Switzerland, U.S. President Donald Trump said that “Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful, also, but they’re not … Canada lives because of the United States.”

The president’s remarks were widely perceived at the time as a veiled threat against Canada; that our nation’s continued existence is conditional on the goodwill and benevolence of the U.S.

And, given that Trump’s words were spoken while he was discussing his “Golden Dome” proposal that would defend both Canada and the U.S. from airborne attacks, the remarks were interpreted in a military context.

Trump was stating something that has been true since at least 1944, when the U.S. developed the first nuclear bomb. The U.S. has the power to wipe out any nation, including Canada, anytime it chooses to. That’s not news, but what if Trump was really speaking from an economic perspective? Does Canada “live” because of the economic power and good graces of the U.S.?

While conducting research for another column, I came across information that would shock many Canadians if they were aware of it. I found that almost every sector of the Canadian economy is owned and/or controlled by foreign corporations, and that U.S. firms account for roughly half of all foreign-controlled assets in the broader Canadian economy.

For example, Canada has a thriving auto parts industry, but our auto manufacturing sector is 100 per cent foreign-owned, mostly by U.S. car makers. The Canadian aluminum, steel and food processing industries are entirely owned by foreign corporations, with U.S. companies having large stakes in both sectors. Our oil and natural gas industry is largely controlled by U.S. companies, including control of the top four oil sands producers. Canada’s largest newspaper chain, Postmedia, is owned by a U.S. hedge fund.

Canada’s pharmaceutical industry was a point of national pride decades ago, but more than half of the Canadian pharma market now belongs to U.S.-owned multinational corporations. Almost all pharmaceutical patents for brand-name medications sold in Canada are held by foreign (largely American and European) companies. Canada once had a dominant generic drug industry that kept prices down, but the majority of top generic suppliers now operating in Canada are foreign-owned or have foreign parent groups.

Just one of Canada’s top four potash companies is Canadian owned and operated, while one of the other three, Mosaic, is based in Florida. The Canadian mining industry has a worldwide presence, but U.S.-owned companies are becoming increasingly active in mining within Canada, especially for critical minerals to support the U.S. defence industry. Just last week, Agnico Eagle, a corporation with large foreign shareholders, announced plans to spend $2 billion on a gold mine in Nunavut.

This is the legacy of the original Canada-U.S. Free Trade agreement and its successors (now CUSMA). In 1988, then-Liberal Party Leader John Turner warned Canadians that the ultimate outcome of unrestricted free trade would be economic and political domination by the U.S. During a debate with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, he said that “We built a country east and west and north. We built it on an infrastructure that deliberately resisted the continental pressure of the United States. For 120 years we’ve done it. With one signature of a pen, you’ve reversed that. It will reduce us, I am sure, to an economic colony of the United States.”

He was right, and here we are, squarely under the thumb of U.S. corporations.

Canada once had a thriving, independent economy that largely protected us from the economic and political whims and turmoil of other nations. We had a Canadian-owned manufacturing sector that produced high-quality merchandise, and we were proud of our Canadian brands.

Ask yourself this question: When was the last time you saw a new product with a label that said “Made in Canada”? I bet it has been a while, and that’s a huge problem.

The jobs of millions of Canadians, including many living here in Brandon, depend on the willingness of U.S. corporations to continue doing business in Canada. If those corporations decide to move their Canadian operations back to the U.S. — and Trump is pressuring many of them to do exactly that — jobs would be lost and there are far too few Canadian corporations capable of filling the gaps that would be created.

I think this is what Trump was getting at in his remarks about Canada “living” thanks to the U.S. He knows that a “bigly” portion of the Canadian economy is owned and controlled by American corporations, and that it makes us very vulnerable. If those corporations board up their buildings and go home, we are in deep trouble, and Trump knows it.

What’s the solution? We need to make self-sufficiency a national priority again. That means that we stop outsourcing our economy and revisit foreign ownership rules, even it means amending or walking away from existing trade agreements.

We need tax and regulatory policies that encourage and prioritize Canadian companies growing to become industry leaders. We must innovate, focus on creating the economy of the future and do a better job of creating and protecting intellectual property inside Canada.

Most of all, we must choose our own path, stop being passive followers and to become leaders again. If other nations wish to join us, that’s fine, but we must always put Canada first.

We stopped doing that decades ago, and now we are paying the price. That has to stop, that has to change, and that has to happen now.