Juno News - April 26, 2020


It's time to bring back manufacturing jobs to Canada


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

188.5497

Word Count

595

Sentence Count

10

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 In the weeks months years ahead here in Canada, we're gonna have to have an open
00:00:09.420 conversation about trade and manufacturing. We're gonna have to talk
00:00:13.680 about it in ways that we're not used to talking about it, in ways that cross
00:00:17.440 political lines. It may initially make people feel uncomfortable, but we have to
00:00:21.300 do it in an earnest and open way about bringing back manufacturing to Canada, to
00:00:26.960 North America, doing it to protect Canadian consumers, doing it to protect
00:00:31.460 Canadian workers, because the coronavirus has exposed just how how delicate and
00:00:37.400 fragile the global trade system is, how globalization, while it serves some
00:00:41.780 people, many people, when things are working well, when you're suddenly faced
00:00:45.380 with a crisis, with a pandemic which could recur, when you face the collapse of the
00:00:50.600 transportation grid, or a collapse of the electricity grid, or heaven forbid a world
00:00:55.020 war, a conflict, even an increasing ratcheting up of a Cold War with a
00:00:59.880 country like China, you suddenly realize how compromised you are by not producing
00:01:05.460 more goods in your own country, and how by not having domestic production of many
00:01:10.560 vital goods, that is in and of itself a national security threat. Now a lot of
00:01:16.380 people aren't going to want to have this conversation, because we've heard various
00:01:19.020 economists, business leaders tell us since back in the 90s, oh no, that's not how it
00:01:23.940 works now, manufacturing is gone from North America, you just have to give all
00:01:27.700 that up, it's all gone to Mexico, it's all gone to China, there's nothing you can do
00:01:31.440 about it. I'm sorry, but that's not going to cut it anymore, we have to have fresh
00:01:35.040 thinking, we're going to have to have a whole bunch of policies that
00:01:38.080 traditionally people were not open to, conservatives have become very free
00:01:41.860 market, are traditionally very free market, I am myself, but we're looking at
00:01:46.320 the status quo of this right now, and what we see around the world, well it's really
00:01:51.260 left us vulnerable. I mean what good is free market principles when that's not
00:01:56.180 the dominant protocol in the world right now, and in some respects when you see
00:02:00.440 China rising as a power, rising in their influence, having more and more influence
00:02:05.240 over various trade deals, hey they're creating entire new institutions like the
00:02:09.420 Asian Investment Infrastructure Bank, you realize, okay we can say we're playing the
00:02:14.080 game of Monopoly here, but China's busy playing Trivial Pursuit, we're just
00:02:18.320 playing two completely different games with two completely different rules, so
00:02:22.940 ideological purity doesn't get you very far if it's not helping you get the
00:02:27.140 things you need and the results for your own country. So we have to be open to
00:02:32.000 talking about various different approaches. Donald Trump's been saying this
00:02:35.520 for several years, and a lot of people laughed at him, said it can't be done, it's
00:02:38.900 not possible. Here's the thing, the coronavirus has proven to us why these
00:02:43.100 things need to be done, and you can do them as a Trump thing, you can do some of the
00:02:47.660 things that organized labor on the left has been calling for, they've been
00:02:50.660 calling for different measures that will actually play a role in all this. We've
00:02:53.920 all got to put our heads together in this and acknowledge that we've got to do
00:02:57.220 what we can to make more products in Canada and North America to keep the jobs
00:03:02.220 here, and to keep us safe for the next time something like this may tragically happen.