An Open Letter to the Leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition

How We Can Restore Canada's Competitive Standing in the Face of Adversity

Mar 03, 2025

white and red flag under blue sky during daytime — Photo by chris robert on Unsplash

In order to compete, you have to learn to cooperate.
- Bill Scherkenbach

An Open Letter to The Honourable Pierre Poilievre, P.C., M.P.
Leader of the Opposition
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6

Dear Mr. Poilievre,

My name is Christopher R. Chapman. I am a small business owner and consultant with a shared interest in seeing our country succeed, and through my work I have gained some unique knowledge and understanding that I believe could be applied toward changing our economy’s fortunes, borne from the teachings of an obscure American statistician, Dr. W. E. Deming, who taught the Japanese how to turn their post-war economy around. It came to be known as The Japanese Miracle.

I think these teachings would dovetail perfectly with your Canada First agenda, and could amplify it through the adoption of a National Strategy for the Improvement of Quality and Productivity. The aim of this letter is to explain how.

How Are We Doing?

Canada is at a dire moment in its 157-year history: our economy is on the ropes, its long, slow decline revealed almost instantly by the threat of stiff 25% tariffs from the US. Our productivity, once close behind theirs, now trails by an ever-widening margin; our G7-lagging GDP, according to economist Trever Tombe, was 43% lower than the Americans in 2023, and flirting with 50% for 2024. We are also a heavily indebted people, with consumer credit at 103% of GDP, and half of us a mere $200 away from insolvency. In sum, we’re about to enter a trade war at the worst possible time.

Both the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, and his Sr. Deputy Governor, Carolyn Rogers, have said in separate remarks a year apart that we are well-past the time to break the [emergency] glass to rescue the economy, as if to say there's something extraordinary we’re not already doing or have considered. Both have appealed to business leaders and politicians to change their behaviours to fix our GDP and productivity problems, because they are running out of viable options that won’t risk triggering hyperinflation. What is required at this time is something in short supply: leadership who know what to do.

Working Together to Reverse the Decline

In a campaign video you posted to X on February 3rd you took a bold step in this direction by proposing we become our own best customers by removing trade and regulatory barriers between the provinces, unlocking up to $200B in GDP growth, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. I’m not certain if you realized when you said, “Work together. Fight together. Win together. That’s how we’ll put Canada First.”, you were on to something much more significant, much more powerful than a punchy campaign slogan designed to appeal to nostalgia and lost virtues that could not only halt our decline, but reverse it.

Dr. Deming’s Lessons

What you may not know is that your appeal to work together has a profound connection to the lessons Dr. Deming taught the Japanese that ignited their economy’s recovery. They are well-aligned with your Canada First platform, and could create our own Canadian economic miracle, through a National Strategy for the Improvement of Quality and Productivity that will serve as a guiding aim and purpose for the recovery of our economy.

Let’s begin with the lessons Deming taught.

The Three Lessons Deming Taught the Japanese

Starting in 1950, Dr. Deming taught the Japanese how to transform their economy starting with the following three lessons:

Understanding the economy and everything in it as a system of interdependent parts (government, companies, people and machines) that are themselves systems which work together to create products and services.
A system functions best when the parts cooperate with each other as opposed to compete. This applies inside the factory as well as with other industry peers.
As quality of a product or service improves, productivity naturally follows.

Lesson 1: The Economy is a System

Dr. Deming first taught Japanese top-management to visualize their entire island nation and its economy as a system in which they all played a part. This system, he explained, requires an aim to align all the parts toward accomplishing, and is improved through the management of the interactions between the parts rather than the parts themselves.

The aim of Japan’s system’s then, as now, is to enhance their international competitiveness through the production of high-quality goods.

NB: An advantage we have over the Japanese is our abundant natural resources, which we are currently exporting and purchasing-back at a price multiple in the form of finished goods. A key part of a National Strategy could recommend working with industry and business to see more finished goods made here.

Lesson 2: Cooperation Over Adversarial Competition

Next, Dr. Deming explained that systems only work when the participants cooperate over the long term to achieve the aim, rather than adversarially compete with one another for selfish short term gains. Cooperation takes many forms, including how previous competitors could collaborate on standards and research to benefit their entire industry.

A modern example of this kind of cooperation can be found in the recent announcement between Toyota, Subaru, and Mazda to collaborate on the creation of new internal combustion engines that are tailored toward hybrid electric applications.

NB: This is what you were on to with your punchy campaign slogan and commitment to break down interprovincial trade barriers. A caveat to bear in mind here is that the cooperation Deming advised to the Japanese was motivated through prosperity for everyone as the economy grew, not through direct financial subsidies as tends to be done in North America.

Lesson 3: Productivity Naturally Follows Quality

Finally, Deming taught the Japanese the relationship between quality, productivity, and economic growth as a consequence of working cooperatively as a system: as quality is improoved, productivity naturally follows as time and costs from rework and delays is recovered in a never-ending cycle that he called a “chain reaction”:

For our purposes here, we can define quality as how well the components of the products and services we create fit together and work together to serve a customer need, from decisions at the top through to delivery. It also extends to the interactions between people, teams, departments, vendors, suppliers, and customers: cooperation is essential to improving quality everywhere.

If quality is continually improved, productivity gains for the company and nation accrue as workers and their companies are able to do substantially more for the same or less effort. Conceptually, this can be thought of as moving a fulcrum under a lever to increase its “mechanical advantage”:

Quality improvements can take many forms, and do not always necessitate buying new equipment, hiring-in skilled workers, or more expensive materials: much can be gained by paying attention to the causes of rework and delays between people, teams, departments, and government.

NB: A very important caveat of Dr. Deming’s chain reaction is that a system (company, government office, hospital, school) can only achieve the level of quality management allows: no amount of skill nor care of an individual can overcome it. This is a very different perspective to what we believe in Canada, which is why leadership will be essential to adopting a quality mindset here.

Applying the Lessons: The National Strategy for the Improvement of Quality and Productivity

In my introduction I proposed that you were on to something with your appeal to “work together, fight together, win together” that could reverse our economic decline, which as I’ve outlined above is the second lesson Dr. Deming taught the Japanese: cooperation over adversarial competition. As powerful as this is, when combined with a systems view of the economy and the link between quality and productivity, it turns into the tool behind the emergency glass we need to reach for.

Therefore, I propose harnessing all of Deming’s lessons through the adoption of a National Strategy for the Improvement of Quality and Productivity under your leadership, defining how we initiate our own Canadian economic miracle:

First, it will set the AIM all efforts for Canada’s economic recovery will be directed toward accomplishing, i.e. enhancing Canadian competitive standing by promoting the improvement of quality and productivity through cooperation over adversarial competition wherever possible;
Second, it will articulate the means to accomplish this, i.e. through adoption of whole-system quality improvement methods and techniques;
Third, it will direct the development of programs to teach and disseminate the skills and methods required to become proficient in quality improvement according to industry or occupation;
Fourth, it will set national targets and goals that the methods will be applied toward achieving, including how to gather and analyze data for assessing progress;
Fifth, it will identify high-priority areas for improvement along with guidance on how this can be achieved through a whole-system approach;
Sixth, it will facilitate cooperation wherever needed to meet national goals and objectives, such as between provinces or businesses, industrial peers, and regulators.

So constituted, this strategy would serve as a “North Star” for the Federal government and all legislation it enacts, along with the participation of Ministries, departments, and agencies in service to the Provinces and their respective economies, all working together as a system to improve our competitive standing in the world.

The Canadian Economic Miracle

The proposed strategy I have outlined is entirely compatible with your Canada First agenda, providing it with a clear aim and means that all Canadians can understand and enjoin in implementing. For example, your plan to overhaul our internal trade agreement to break down interprovincial barriers is well-aligned to the aim of improving quality and productivity through cooperation over adversarial competition, and can be built upon with additional resources to teach participants how to accomplish the aim in their own organizations.

Imagine what a Canadian economic miracle, inspired by the same concepts and methods that Dr. Deming taught the Japanese, could accomplish here with all of our blessings and head-start? The choice we have before us is whether we want to redouble and retrench the policies and thinking of the old economics that have led us to our present decline, tariffs notwithstanding, or to chart a course guided by the new economics of cooperation, quality, and productivity.

I hope you will consider what I have provided here in your deliberations for how you can lead Canada in the future should you become the next Prime Minister. Please feel free to contact me directly here or on LinkedIn if you would like a deeper-dive into what I have described.

Sincere regards,

Chris R. Chapman

The Digestible Deming

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