Out of Canada's Economic Crisis
A Business Professor Agrees: We Need a Radical Re-Thinking of Our Economy
What happened? Everyone expected the good times to wax better and better. It is easy to manage a business in an expanding market, and easy to suppose that economic conditions can only grow better and better. In contrast with expectations, we find, on looking back, that we have been on an economic decline for three decades. It is easy to date an earthquake, but not a decline.
Dr. W.E. Deming, The New Economics.
A QUICK VIDEO to share with you all of an interview on our state broadcaster, the CBC, with Ian Lee, Associate Professor of Business at Sprott School of Business, where he makes some of the same arguments about our current economic crises in Canada as I made in my recent Open Letter to the Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, chiefly:
We’re in an existential economic decline, much like the one that Dr. Deming described the US being in circa 1993 in The New Economics — but worse;
The tariffs are not the cause of our decline, but they have dramatically exposed our weaknesses in terms of poor productivity and GDP—we authored our predicament, and it hasn’t been for lack of ample warnings;
None of the political leaders in the current election are talking about how to address our fundamentals, save one who has said we need to “reimagine the economy” but has no specifics on what that means.
Prof. Lee makes some further notable remarks:
We are at our lowest level of competitive standing with the US in 150 years;
Our trading partners in Europe don’t want what we can build, but what natural resources like Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) we can ship them — further, they are in a similar productivity predicament;
Counter-tariffs, while popular with our political leadership and the Canadian people, will only worsen our already weak economy and competitive standing because we are not equal to the US in terms of size and scale.
Ergo, as I’ve written earlier, I believe that the radical rethinking, the “New Economics” we require to chart our way out of this crisis, lies with learning and applying Dr. Deming’s theory of management for a Made in Canada solution.
What do you think?
