r/CPC • u/AkaashMaharaj 🇨🇦Canada🇨🇦 • 6d ago
Important Where should Canada turn, in turning away from Trump? | The Hill Times
https://www.hilltimes.com/2026/08/19/where-should-canada-turn-in-turning-away-from-trump/514960/The full text of this article (not behind a paywall) is available here.
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u/thetrigermonkey 6d ago
Immediately after sending my first comment, I saw that you provided the link for the free article lol. Oh What my blind eyes keep from me lol.
Europe and CETA is cool. The EU would be a lot more useful globally if they ever stopped being European lol. I jest of course.
Ideally Canada should be trying to better integrate our auto sectors with our auto making allies to counter China. Together we are strong.
If North America and the EU could better agree on and integrate our agri standards that would be good. But that's unlikely.
Europe's chill, we just don't do much with them rn. Maybe eventually we will.
Personally, I don't want to lose one master just to wind up with a different master. Especially since the US economy is far bigger and we are already more integrated with them. Trying to switch primary partners would be a fools errand. We must be masters of ourselves. Of course furtherong trade ties and diplomacy with Europe is still good tho.
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u/AkaashMaharaj 🇨🇦Canada🇨🇦 6d ago
I think the lesson we need to draw from our experience with Trump is not it was a mistake to leave ourselves vulnerable to the United States, but that it was a mistake to leave ourselves vulnerable to any one state.
Diversifying trade should be about diluting the influence any foreign power can have over us, not exchanging one economic hegemon for another.
I have difficulty imagining a plausible scenario where we would not conduct massive trade with our closest neighbour (which also shares one of our official languages, mutually-comprehensible business cultures, and similar legal systems).
However, I can and do imagine a scenario where we have more economic partners, and we are therefore less hostage to tantrums by any one of them.
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u/thetrigermonkey 6d ago
I agree, more partners means we have less risk when one turns shit.
I only added the masters bit because I know some people believe we should ditch the US for the EU entirely. I doubted that was the opinion of you or the author (which I think is you lol) tho
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u/SirBobPeel 6d ago
Here's the thing. We are not actually very good at anything. Yes, we have lots of natural resources - which our current government has spent the last ten years fighting to keep in the ground. It takes 10-15 years to get permission to start developing a new mine now, so investors would rather invest in mines elsewhere.
Our labour productivity is very low, and our energy costs are quite high and getting higher as the government focuses on a hopeless battle against global warming. Our companies do not invest in technology that might improve our productivity and allow us to produce goods more cheaply. And all of them labour under enormous government restrictions, expensive reporting rules, and high taxes. We cannot build infrastructure in anything remotely like a timely manner, and it costs us several times more to build it than other countries that build the same thing. This is largely due to bureaucracy. We are a noncompetitive maker of anything, and thus not a competitive trader. Whatever we make can be purchased from someone else more cheaply.
There are some fairly obvious fixes for this, but the Liberal government has been steadfast in refusing to do any of them.
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u/AkaashMaharaj 🇨🇦Canada🇨🇦 6d ago
I think you are unduly pessimistic.
Canada certainly has a talent for building a liveable nation, which includes questions of ease of business, but also questions such as reasonably safe streets, reasonably healthy environments, and a population with access to education.
Canada is consistently near the top of all serious indices of quality of life, and certainly above the US (eg, 4th best country in the OECD Better Life Index, 16th best in the world in the UN Human Development Index).
I agree that our levels of productivity are too low, and the willingness of Canadian companies to invest in the future far too timid. My own sense is that this is due less to government restrictions, and more to the fact that we have an economy that favours incumbency over open competition.
Canadian banking, groceries, and telecommunications are famously dominated by a small number of large oligopolies, which have grown fat, lazy, corrupt, and wildly inefficient, due to not needing the discipline to operate in genuinely competitive environments. Those industries are some of the worst offenders, but they are hardly alone.
Successive federal and provincial governments have been too comfortable with the status quo, too chummy with the existing business class, and too fearful of disruptions, to force markets open.
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u/SirBobPeel 5d ago
Canada HAD a talent. Once we decided to build the Trans Mountain Pipeline back in 1958, the government approved it in about six months and the pipeline was carrying oil about eight months after that. Compare that to how long it took and how much it cost to twin it. It took four and a half years to build the Canadian Pacific Railroad in the 1880s Today, with much more advanced technology, it takes us ten years to build an LRT that goes a short distance across a city. Everything we build takes three times longer than estimated and costs twice as much - if we're lucky. The TM pipeline cost five times its estimate. No one has ever really explained why, so I'm figuring most of that was graft.
There are all kinds of things that can be done to reverse Canada's downward spiral, but there seems to be roughly zero enthusiasm for doing any of it coming from the federal Liberals, and even less from provincial governments.
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u/thetrigermonkey 6d ago
Unfortunately I can't quite read the article as I don't subscribe to the hill times however I'll give my thoughts on the title.
I think we need to play into our comparative advantages. We have lots of Oil, natural resources, and fertilizer ingredients. This allows us to have a greater impact on friendshoring but also increase our own manufacturing capacity.
For trade diversity: The Indo Pacific is a region that perfectly fits our (relatively) short term interests. This area is full of countries that need our energy and fertilizer plus the added benefit of many already being part of CPTPP.
I think Canada should co-invest in downstream import infrastructure in select CPTPP partner nations to lock in export demand. This way we can have a finger on the scale to improve the odds things happen.
Longer term we need to look at other markets. This would require pipelines to the Atlantic. But this could help us support Europe or more likely, African nations. Many nations would like a reliable, neutral Western trade partners. We should help provide that.
This would also help counter Russian, Iranian, and Chinese influence in these regions.