It's time to bring back manufacturing jobs to Canada
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about the need to bring manufacturing back to Canada and North America, especially in the wake of the devastating Coronavirus pandemic that has swept across the country, and how we need to deal with it.
Transcript
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In the weeks months years ahead here in Canada, we're gonna have to have an open
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conversation about trade and manufacturing. We're gonna have to talk
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about it in ways that we're not used to talking about it, in ways that cross
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political lines. It may initially make people feel uncomfortable, but we have to
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do it in an earnest and open way about bringing back manufacturing to Canada, to
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North America, doing it to protect Canadian consumers, doing it to protect
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Canadian workers, because the coronavirus has exposed just how how delicate and
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fragile the global trade system is, how globalization, while it serves some
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people, many people, when things are working well, when you're suddenly faced
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with a crisis, with a pandemic which could recur, when you face the collapse of the
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transportation grid, or a collapse of the electricity grid, or heaven forbid a world
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war, a conflict, even an increasing ratcheting up of a Cold War with a
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country like China, you suddenly realize how compromised you are by not producing
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more goods in your own country, and how by not having domestic production of many
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vital goods, that is in and of itself a national security threat. Now a lot of
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people aren't going to want to have this conversation, because we've heard various
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economists, business leaders tell us since back in the 90s, oh no, that's not how it
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works now, manufacturing is gone from North America, you just have to give all
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that up, it's all gone to Mexico, it's all gone to China, there's nothing you can do
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about it. I'm sorry, but that's not going to cut it anymore, we have to have fresh
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thinking, we're going to have to have a whole bunch of policies that
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traditionally people were not open to, conservatives have become very free
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market, are traditionally very free market, I am myself, but we're looking at
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the status quo of this right now, and what we see around the world, well it's really
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left us vulnerable. I mean what good is free market principles when that's not
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the dominant protocol in the world right now, and in some respects when you see
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China rising as a power, rising in their influence, having more and more influence
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over various trade deals, hey they're creating entire new institutions like the
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Asian Investment Infrastructure Bank, you realize, okay we can say we're playing the
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game of Monopoly here, but China's busy playing Trivial Pursuit, we're just
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playing two completely different games with two completely different rules, so
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ideological purity doesn't get you very far if it's not helping you get the
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things you need and the results for your own country. So we have to be open to
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talking about various different approaches. Donald Trump's been saying this
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for several years, and a lot of people laughed at him, said it can't be done, it's
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not possible. Here's the thing, the coronavirus has proven to us why these
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things need to be done, and you can do them as a Trump thing, you can do some of the
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things that organized labor on the left has been calling for, they've been
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calling for different measures that will actually play a role in all this. We've
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all got to put our heads together in this and acknowledge that we've got to do
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what we can to make more products in Canada and North America to keep the jobs
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here, and to keep us safe for the next time something like this may tragically happen.