🇨🇦 Boosting our productivity and protecting our sovereignty
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Canada is clearly at an inflection point. We neither asked for nor wanted this, but ignoring it and carrying on isn’t a solution. So, what should we do? I’m in favour of a big rethink, via a Royal Commission. Given how long this would take, though, we need to get going on at least investigating options.
Here, then, is my list. Note that I’m absolutely not an expert and I’d get voted out of office immediately if I ever managed to become a politician. So, I provide these in the spirit of contributing to a national conversation. No doubt there are better ideas out there. Let’s pick some and start trying stuff!
- Eliminating inter-provincial barriers to trade is the obvious one and evidently could be done within a month. Simultaneously frustrating and emblematic that something debated for decades could actually make significant progress so quickly, once we got motivated.
- While we’re eliminating inter-provincial trade barriers, why not really embrace free trade, including the elimination of supply management?
- Actually prioritizing our sovereignty in the Arctic. Our most recent defence policy statement hints at this, but we continue to expect our armed forces to do too much with too little. The recent announcement of working with Australia to upgrade our Arctic radar equipment is a good example of something we need more of. Underpinning all of this is figuring out how to actually procure equipment. Plus anything we do in the Arctic must properly engage with First Nations.
- The US is inexplicably destroying its preeminence in health science research. We should be actively courting American scientists to relocate to Canada. Our focus should be on epidemiology and public health.
- Raise the HST by 1%, offset by income tax reductions, and dedicate the funds to cities. This one would get me booted out of government quickly. That said, Canadian cities remain under-resourced, relative to the services they need to provide. They need a source of revenue that grows with the economy.
- The CRA should prepopulate our tax returns. They already have most of the information. Just fill them in and allow us to adjust if necessary. Of course, this would require simplifying our tax system, which is the real point.
- Switch to proportional representation already