True Patriot Love - November 13, 2026


Canada Is Losing Its Economic Future to America ft. Dr. Fred Lazar

Stellantis Fallout： Is Canada Losing Its Auto Industry？

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40 minutes

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5,910

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203

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Transcript

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00:00:00 Today I'm lucky enough to have Dr. Fred Lazar.
00:00:08 Fred, nice to see you.
00:00:11 Your background, very impressive.
00:00:13 Associate Professor at York University in Economics
00:00:18 and PhD from Harvard in Economics.
00:00:22 Yes.
00:00:23 Yeah, so when we, you know, we prepared for the show,
00:00:27 we were looking uh of course at tariffs and we continue to do shows on tariffs and i said to
00:00:33 them you know it'd be interesting to get someone on who had looked at this over the years and
00:00:37 you've studied um not only tariffs but you studied protectionism for over 40 years you wrote a book
00:00:45 on it in 1981 um the new protectionism and fred i really wanted just to pick your brain because
00:00:53 before the show we had a quick conversation about it but you know we're we're watching the u.s who
00:01:00 you know are really and you know people ask me all the time you know what's going on i'm a i'm a cpa
00:01:08 by trade i don't practice anymore i'm not a practicing cpa they say what is going on with
00:01:13 trump and everything going on in his world and why is he taking this stance you know to
00:01:19 to really blow up globalism in the United States.
00:01:23 And I always say to him, I don't think he has a choice.
00:01:27 And I'm going to stop there and I'm going to turn it over to you
00:01:30 because I want you to, I'd really like to go through a little bit
00:01:33 about why you wrote your book and what's happened since.
00:01:38 Okay, there's a lot of material here.
00:01:40 I'm not sure it's sort of the ordering.
00:01:42 But let's take the current situation with Trump.
00:01:45 The U.S. probably, I'm trying to think,
00:01:49 past 20, 25 years, has been running large, very large current account deficits. They're importing
00:01:59 much more than they export, somewhere in the order of about 500 billion to a trillion.
00:02:07 And as a result, they've got to finance this. So they finance it by sort of borrowing abroad.
00:02:15 so the u.s for a long time has been the largest international debtor country in the history of
00:02:22 the world their international outstanding international debt has been government
00:02:27 corporate individual probably now approaches 5 trillion dollars so many countries for the past
00:02:35 20 some odd years have been arguing well the u.s has got to do something about this
00:02:40 this is not sustainable at some point uh foreign investors are going to say you know what us sorry
00:02:48 we don't have confidence in you going forward and that would lead possibly to a serious or even
00:02:56 global financial collapse so there's been pressure on the us so if you look at the
00:03:02 options what could the us do well one possibility is to allow their exchange rate to depreciate
00:03:08 the u.s that's not that easy for the u.s to do would be other countries but that would have
00:03:16 negative impacts on everybody else and the global economy what's another possibility
00:03:21 a recession in the u.s you know we saw whenever the u.s enters a recession the trade their current
00:03:27 account deficit you know is not as large well recession is not an acceptable policy in the u.s
00:03:33 And again, it has negative repercussions. What's the third option? Protectionism.
00:03:40 Gee, let's close the doors to imports. That will greatly improve the current account position. 0.98
00:03:50 Again, not acceptable to other countries. So those three options, they all have problems.
00:03:56 They all negatively impact the world. What's the fourth option? Well, every other country
00:04:02 undertakes policies to grow more rapidly than the U.S. so that they start importing more from the
00:04:08 U.S. The problem is, you know, China has grown quite rapidly, but they haven't opened up the
00:04:16 doors to imports. The European Union has been in economic decline. So you see these countries
00:04:23 demanding the US does something, Trump decides, well, protectionism is a solution. They don't
00:04:30 like that option. The other part of it is, and Trump's been right, de-industrialization.
00:04:36 What we saw in COVID, the global dependence on China for drugs, for a lot of protective equipment,
00:04:45 and many countries at that time said, we can't allow this to happen in the future.
00:04:50 we've got to be more self-reliant. And now we have more countries talking about
00:04:55 economic security, national security, sovereignty. And Trump says, look, I can't be dependent on
00:05:04 foreign suppliers of critical components, parts, especially for the military. We have to repatriate
00:05:12 manufacturing. So that underlies what he's done. Getting back to protectionism.
00:05:20 Again, I'm old. I was involved in the great debates in the 70s with fellow economists
00:05:26 about the great advantages of free trade. And you could see with each new round of the GATT
00:05:36 negotiations the general agreement of trade tariffs and trade they all dealt with tariffs
00:05:42 that was easy one country says well i'll reduce this tariff if you reduce that tariff so it's
00:05:49 really a serious a series of bilateral negotiations that produced a final agreement
00:05:56 the tokyo round was the i think the first round that seriously looked at non-tariff measures
00:06:02 and non-tariff measures are simply protectionist measures to protect the domestic economy,
00:06:09 to minimize imports. And I looked at it and said, okay, why have these non-tariff measures
00:06:15 increased? Well, in discussions with various people around the world, economists, non-economists,
00:06:24 you know, the answer that I kept hearing was, their countries, they talk a great game with
00:06:31 free trade, but there's a limit to how far they want to go. So when tariffs decline too much,
00:06:37 there's a demand internally and it becomes good politics to introduce the non-tariff measures
00:06:45 to maintain the level of protection of domestic industries. And that's why we've seen since the
00:06:52 1980s, each following ground of multilateral trade negotiations has taken longer because
00:06:59 they're dealing with issues that really impinge upon sovereignty. And the current Doha round,
00:07:06 we're now completing the 26th year. I doubt there will ever be a completion to this because
00:07:12 countries are not willing to give up control over critical domestic policies. So that's where we are
00:07:21 today. A very quick favor before we continue. A large percentage of you who watch or listen to
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00:07:47 seconds costs nothing keeps you informed so thank you now back to the show yeah no fred you know
00:07:55 A great summary, and I think, you know, your point, quite frankly,
00:08:01 that as debt loads on the country's, you know, increase,
00:08:05 you know, the options become limited.
00:08:07 I think that's really interesting for the viewers to hear
00:08:10 because, you know, when we look at what the U.S. is doing,
00:08:14 we think to ourselves, okay, you know, what's happening out there
00:08:17 and why are they doing it?
00:08:19 Well, they don't, to your point, they only have four options, quite frankly,
00:08:23 And those four options are very limited from a political stance.
00:08:27 You know, you're looking at, you know, you just looked at, quite frankly, what's happened with the change of government in the U.S.
00:08:34 from the Democrats, the blue wave going across the United States.
00:08:39 They're in the, regardless of whether the Democrats or the Republicans kind of get into power, their options are the same.
00:08:48 And so, you know, I like to remind people of that, that they only have a limited number of things they can do to quell this huge debt burden that they keep compiling as they now they can get out of forever wars and all that other stuff.
00:09:02 But but the debt burden is there.
00:09:04 yeah i mean uh what i did not discuss again economic theory uh in the comments trying to
00:09:11 explain why has the u.s uh built up and maintained this large trade deficit and you play around with
00:09:21 some sort of uh equations and you end up with the conclusion you know this is the theory just
00:09:28 the assumption here well if you play around the numbers it looks as if the trade deficit
00:09:34 is directly related to the government budgetary deficit now that's just playing with the data
00:09:42 it's an identity and then economists said okay so what's the theory well the theory is
00:09:47 the budgetary deficit is what causes the trade deficit so a lot of economists argue that well
00:09:55 if you want to improve the trade deficit, you've got to reduce the budgetary deficit.
00:10:01 And there is some sort of correlation between the two. It's not a simple direct causation.
00:10:08 So you're right. You've got the budgetary deficit and with the increasing federal government debt,
00:10:16 you've got the trade deficit and the increasing foreign debt of the US as a whole.
00:10:22 And as you correctly point out, at some point, domestic and foreign investors are simply going to say, you know what, the US, you're a strong economy, but there's too much uncertainty going forward and you can't maintain this.
00:10:43 You can't sustain large deficits and continually building up, which is the largest government budgetary debt in the history of the world.
00:10:55 You can't continue running large trade deficits and the largest foreign debt in the history of the world.
00:11:02 Something has got to give.
00:11:04 and there's increasing pressure by investors domestically and globally on the U.S. government
00:11:12 to do something. You know, Trump has focused on the trade deficit, not on the budgetary deficit.
00:11:21 Right. And you can't ignore the budgetary deficit. Right. No, that's a great point.
00:11:27 You know, the productivity levels and the productivity per capita in the U.S. and Canada,
00:11:32 you know we're struggling with it here we talk about it quite a bit now and i think the prime
00:11:36 the prime minister has made some taxation incentive moves in the last what what is this
00:11:45 budget that is now now before it passes we'll see how it goes but given them they have a majority
00:11:50 it should pass but um you know the mega productivity uh deductions and shred credits and all the
00:11:58 things we're trying to do from a tax perspective um to get productivity levels going in the country
00:12:05 it was always my belief you know when terrorists came up and when protectionism started it really
00:12:12 was the challenge that that trump and the united states would have would be quite frankly getting
00:12:19 their productivity levels giving their population composition and that's the age groups in the
00:12:25 population uh and getting americans back to work again i i think i i don't know if i've talked to
00:12:31 you about it fred i lived in the u.s for 12 years um and one of the things that was uh beneficial to
00:12:37 me from my companies in the u.s was the fact that there was a lot of opportunity uh with industries
00:12:45 that americans just would not participate in or want to do so that you know there was a big gap
00:12:51 When I hit the U.S., quite frankly, it was like, you know, it was like a plethora of industries that, quite frankly, you could set up companies in and easily work within because it was competitive.
00:13:08 But quite frankly, there weren't a lot of Americans who wanted to do that hard work to deal with those industries.
00:13:13 And that was kind of till I left at the end of the Obama.
00:13:17 I left after the Obama term.
00:13:19 That was basically what I went through.
00:13:23 And, you know, I think that's the challenge he has even today.
00:13:27 And quite frankly, we as a nation are going through a very similar thing right now
00:13:32 as we're trying to figure out how to, you know, incentivize people to start producing again.
00:13:39 So the production and the productivity is a big issue in whether it be trade deficits.
00:13:44 You know, you mentioned the U.S. imports a lot of goods.
00:13:47 part of that is it wasn't happening at home okay now I've done some work in the venture capital
00:13:54 area and has somehow tangentially related to what you were just saying and what I learned again
00:14:03 many years ago doing this the following you know why is the U.S. the technological leader in the
00:14:11 world because Department of Defense and NASA contracts. Silicon Valley was created by these
00:14:22 contracts. And I've always been a supporter of an industrial policy for Canada. I was on the
00:14:32 Liberal Platform Committee in 1980 when Pierre Trudeau's last run for Prime Minister. I pushed
00:14:40 this. I got overruled by others. So I always look to the U.S. It's the most successful program in
00:14:47 the history of the world. We don't have the same Department of Defense spending, but there are other
00:14:53 areas. So, you know, that's critical. Now, the venture capital industry in the U.S. grew quite
00:15:03 dramatically and in an important way. The venture capitalists started creating business ideas and
00:15:12 then found management teams. They were very creative. They were out there sort of looking
00:15:17 for new ideas. I think in the past 10 years, they've become sort of more fascinated with sort
00:15:23 of the casino society. Let's make an investment. Let's promote it and dump it onto the next group
00:15:30 with suckers so past 10 years of being somewhat disappointed but a spin-off of the venture capital
00:15:37 industry was a large angel investor network we don't have that in Canada I've had over the years 0.79
00:15:46 young people approach me students and others I've helped friends look at various business plans
00:15:52 most of them you know we're not good there were a number probably 10 percent that were quite good
00:16:00 I would ask the people, how much money do you need? And inevitably it was at most a couple
00:16:07 of hundred thousand, usually 50,000. And I tell them, well, I'm sorry, you're on the wrong side
00:16:12 of the border. To get that type of money, you got to go south. And we haven't really fixed that
00:16:21 problem now with incentives uh very good friend of mine jack mince uh an excellent economist
00:16:31 he's been pushing sort of the need to reduce taxes to incentivize companies to invest
00:16:40 and i've had disagreements with him over this i'm a fan of michael porter
00:16:44 uh either he was a year ahead or a year behind me in grad school he wrote a book
00:16:49 on comparative advantage and i've said if you think of it logically where do the investment
00:16:57 opportunities come from they come from your competitive strategy and the competitive strategy
00:17:03 necessitates that you make these investments if you don't the company is going to die
00:17:09 and you got to make them regardless of the tax system so whenever i hear a ceo gee if the tax
00:17:16 rate were lower i'd make the investment all i think about is the board should fire this individual
00:17:22 you've got to make these investments what does the tax system do it basically tells you where
00:17:29 what geographic location you should record your profits set up your company gee it's lower tax
00:17:36 regime in country a i'll divert the profits there but when i hear the government saying well you know
00:17:42 we need this incentive that incentive you're essentially trying to bribe companies to do
00:17:49 what they have to do so what does this tell me that again the entrepreneurial spirit in canada
00:17:57 it's there among young people it's probably there among people that start small companies
00:18:05 it's not there in our large companies and one of the problems with people trying to start up
00:18:11 or our small companies and there's a similar problem in the u.s but to a lesser degree
00:18:16 the availability of capital gee if you go to the bank to borrow money yeah you put up collateral
00:18:25 equivalent to 150 of the loan and i suspect you've encountered this with the small companies
00:18:31 the difficulty they have dealing with the financial institutions that's a problem
00:18:37 carney and his budget is trying to address it but that's the made a more important problem to
00:18:44 address then what other bribe can we come up with to incentivize companies so yes certain industries
00:18:53 in the us they weren't attractive to silicon valley or venture capitalist because that's
00:18:59 not what they grew up on that's not what they were used to but you used to have in the past
00:19:06 a large banking system regional and local banks that's changed in the us now you have these mega
00:19:14 national banks and in canada we've got what the big five the big six the national banks uh the
00:19:23 people at the local or regional level don't really have the autonomy the flexibility to take chances
00:19:30 with small companies, young companies, you know, too risky. A major company, a large company comes
00:19:39 along and asks for a half billion dollar loan. Hey, no problem. You know, you're too big to fail.
00:19:45 Small entrepreneur comes along and says, you know, I've grown this company. We're succeeding.
00:19:50 You know, we're now going into year 11. I need a million dollars for growth. Sorry.
00:19:56 that's a problem in canada that i think underlies our productivity problem not that we don't have
00:20:01 the talent we just don't have the financial system to get them started and one other comment
00:20:08 someone pointed out to me the graduates of the university of waterloo their engineering
00:20:14 their computer science programs that's something in the order of 75 or 80 percent of the graduates
00:20:19 go south to the US because that's where the job and venture capital opportunities lie.
00:20:27 We're losing a lot of talent because the money isn't here.
00:20:33 Yeah, that's true, Fred.
00:20:34 I was just in Calgary a few months ago and I met a friend.
00:20:38 It was a small IT think tank cafe work center.
00:20:44 And it was interesting because we were having a coffee.
00:20:46 He said, what is this place?
00:20:47 And he said, well, I put some money into this place.
00:20:49 and i said oh that's really cool you know what exactly is it he says it's a holding tank for
00:20:55 canadians and people from other countries to wait for their u.s citizenship or the u.s permit work
00:21:00 permits to come through so they they hang out here um for six eight a year until they actually are
00:21:07 able to go to this to the u.s and actually access capital i said you made a business out of that he
00:21:12 said yeah i made a business out of it i thought oh my goodness that's a terrible story um but you
00:21:18 you know, it is very interesting when you actually put it that way. You know, as you're speaking,
00:21:26 I'm thinking to myself, you know, I live that. That was part of the, you know, part of the reason
00:21:30 I actually did go to the U.S. because it was so hard to get going as an entrepreneur in Canada
00:21:37 and I was able to use my credentials to actually go south and then do other things on my own
00:21:44 and then come back.
00:21:46 So it's interesting you're kind of tying into that,
00:21:49 which I've experienced, so I understand it.
00:21:54 You know, it's interesting.
00:21:55 I'm going through it as you're talking,
00:21:57 and I'm thinking to myself,
00:21:59 okay, so what next for Canada? 1.00
00:22:01 And I know the Chinese and the Japanese years ago
00:22:07 in their banking systems made some strategic decisions
00:22:11 to, let's call it, disaggregate them,
00:22:14 to split them up into smaller units to deal with a very similar problem that you're talking about is
00:22:20 the local entrepreneur getting access to capital to spearhead development.
00:22:26 You know, we're in the middle of a budget process right now where we've put a budget in place,
00:22:31 lots of tax incentives. I like your comments on tax incentives and lots of other things
00:22:36 in there but you know how do we how do we you know given the environment we're in and if it's
00:22:43 not going to change with the us how do we kind of and get people going in this country right now
00:22:50 is it is it trying to change our banking system is it disaggregating or making smaller loans
00:22:57 available to smaller entrepreneurs um right what would be your recommendation at this time okay uh
00:23:04 Before I respond to that, I want to point out, I was involved with a tech company in the San Diego area for about six, seven years.
00:23:12 And the technology they developed just blew my mind.
00:23:15 They were dealing with Microsoft.
00:23:19 And I brought them up to meet with young doctors at several major hospitals in Toronto.
00:23:25 and what blew me away was these doctors had great ideas some of the best business ideas
00:23:37 I've ever encountered in again 50 55 years and what was the problem they couldn't get
00:23:47 either support from the hospital or there was no money and if only a quarter of these plants
00:23:57 had been funded we would have companies that would be at the forefront of the whole health
00:24:03 care field in a number of areas and to me i was saying he said young people they know the problems
00:24:12 you know they're in multiple problems they know they know this they've got great solutions they
00:24:16 They can't get started.
00:24:18 Now, with regards to your question,
00:24:21 and I go back probably about 25 years ago,
00:24:26 I proposed to the Dean of the Business School at York.
00:24:30 I remember we have a number of business schools
00:24:31 across the country, a number of engineering schools,
00:24:34 good business schools, good engineering schools,
00:24:37 good medical schools, largely funded by the public.
00:24:41 I had talked to a number of institutional investors and dealing with this problem.
00:24:49 So, well, why don't you invest in startups?
00:24:52 And the response, which was quite legitimate, look, it would cost us as much in terms of researching, understanding,
00:25:04 and then getting involved in investment of 500,000 as it does 15, 20 million.
00:25:11 we don't have the manpower to focus on a small investments the large ones so it's the cost of
00:25:23 you know doing the small investments and i said well what if you know would you be willing to
00:25:30 sort of contribute let's say 10 million to a pool with a couple of others and then put the onus on
00:25:37 let's say you know a business school to then solicit proposals evaluate them decide which
00:25:44 one should be funded and then have faculty members go on the board they said sure putting
00:25:50 in 10 million 15 million into such a pool it's really just you know uh petty cash for us
00:25:59 and it could produce some good results some companies that could succeed and grow to the
00:26:05 stage where we then make major investments in them. So I went to the dean and said, well,
00:26:11 why don't we set up that sort of four senior people, you and Jim Gillies, who was there at
00:26:17 the time, two outsiders, and then let's start soliciting proposals. Each one we give to three
00:26:24 faculty members that will evaluate. Either it's dumb, either, hey, this is great, goes to the 0.86
00:26:31 four person committee for approval or let's work on it but more importantly even if it gets funded 0.96
00:26:38 there's another problem it's not just capital it's business acumen so where I've seen really
00:26:47 good business plans yeah there would be one or two individuals really good but do they have the
00:26:53 marketing skills the finance skills the accounting skills the operational skills it would have maybe
00:27:00 one or two but not all of them so that's why i suggested let's put the three faculty members
00:27:06 that approve this on the board to provide that financial assist that assistance what would be
00:27:15 in it for the university we don't charge but we would take an equity stake and that's how we would
00:27:21 be compensated the faculty members as board members they would get some equity stake so
00:27:29 there is no cost up front it's essentially we're repaying the public for paying our salaries
00:27:37 but again i would suggest to a number of business schools across the country
00:27:43 partner with your engineering schools your medical schools your computer science group
00:27:51 bring them all together i'm sure you can get you know 30 to 50 million funding from the private
00:27:59 sector from institutional investors from the banks that could be topped off by provincial
00:28:05 and federal governments and if you could set up three four five of these across the country
00:28:13 that would i think kickstart the whole angel investor and venture capital system
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00:28:35 All right, back to the show.
00:28:37 Oh, I love the idea, Fred.
00:28:39 I never thought of it that way.
00:28:40 Actually, that's a great idea.
00:28:42 And, you know, I think a brilliant idea to actually have each of the faculty members on the board.
00:28:48 I love that idea as an oversight, you know, because as a young, you know,
00:28:52 I grew up with an entrepreneur, so quite frankly, a lot of my skills getting into business were
00:28:58 from my father, watching him run his business because he arrived in Canada and quite frankly,
00:29:04 you know, struggled. So as a young kid, I had to learn accounting. I had to kind of work with him
00:29:08 on how we market in our sales because he was adapting. So those are great things. And those
00:29:14 are things that most Canadians right now wouldn't have any clue, especially, you know, younger
00:29:20 canadians that are right now going through it because that's a generation removed um from what
00:29:26 they had probably seen so no i love the idea um it then quite frankly you know it's interesting
00:29:35 so you you talked to your own york university about it um it'd be interesting to push that that
00:29:43 idea forward and how would like you know just trying to figure out how you actually get that
00:29:47 forward that idea in play yeah i mean uh i i think a lead role could be played by provincial
00:29:55 governments and the federal government behind them saying look pick five institutions across
00:30:03 the country you know so you know we don't need one in each province but pick five we've got
00:30:10 some really great schools out there and say to them, here, we're going to start you up with 50
00:30:20 million. We'll help you talk to institutional investors and maybe each of these institutional
00:30:29 investors will be willing to put in 10, 20, 30 million. We'll talk to the banks
00:30:35 uh collectively and we'll spread it among you and start doing this yeah you know solicit ideas from
00:30:44 your current students from your alumni and from people in your community that's a great idea
00:30:52 it's a great idea you know as is the u.s as things tighten up and we're starting to see
00:30:57 You know, I was giving a lecture to a group of seniors,
00:31:02 it's an association that I support,
00:31:05 and they asked me to talk a little bit about
00:31:09 trade surpluses around the world.
00:31:12 And, you know, when terrorists came in,
00:31:15 as you mentioned, the trade surpluses changed
00:31:18 and it caused, you know, a lot of rush to ship goods.
00:31:24 So you saw some weird trends
00:31:27 You saw stockpiling in parts of the nation and you looked at it and you think, oh, tariffs are in, but we're seeing some really interesting numbers because people are trying to get ahead of tariffs.
00:31:37 They're trying to push goods into other countries and then move them into the U.S. on other tariff rates.
00:31:43 People are geniuses when it comes to figuring out systems and then moving within the systems.
00:31:49 So we know the numbers are hard to look at right now because, quite frankly, we're still waiting for the, I believe, this is my belief with respect to trade surpluses and deficits, and we're still waiting to see the tariff impacts because right now between the oil spikes and the imbalances because of people stockpiling all over the world due to what the U.S. is doing,
00:32:17 you're still seeing the shifts and i i believe fred that we're going to start to really see it
00:32:24 come the end of winter so i've kind of kind of and i've kind of mapped it out a little and i think
00:32:30 because our economic uh we slow as canadians through the winter you know it gets quieter
00:32:36 quite frankly the weather gets worse so people consume less quite frankly it's uh so i think
00:32:41 we're going to probably burn off some of that stockpiling and then quite frankly at some point
00:32:46 or if the realism of the tariffs will show itself.
00:32:50 What's your belief on that?
00:32:52 No, I mean, again, one of the objectives for Trump was to repatriate the industry.
00:32:59 Well, guess what?
00:33:00 A manufacturing facility is not built overnight.
00:33:04 It takes time.
00:33:06 So the repatriation is occurring, but it's going to be a multi-year process.
00:33:13 And if we were to have these discussions five years from now, the trade data would look a lot different than they do now.
00:33:21 Now, this gets back to an early question you posed.
00:33:25 What should Canada have done?
00:33:27 When Trump got elected November 2024, I argued at that time, Canada should have sent a team of three, four people,
00:33:38 meet with Trump and his team and say, okay, how can we work together on a trade front?
00:33:45 And we could have negotiated rather quickly, you know, an interesting side deal to the current
00:33:53 U.S., Canada, Mexico trade agreement that would have been beneficial to Canada and to the U.S.
00:34:02 we didn't for political reasons. And what Justin Trudeau at that time and then Mark Carney
00:34:12 following has found much more popular to pretend to stand up to the U.S.
00:34:18 What they forgot was that one of the key objectives of negotiating the original
00:34:24 free trade agreement with the U.S. was to get guaranteed access to the U.S. market
00:34:31 to prevent Canada and Canadian companies from being sideswiped in trade disputes initiated by
00:34:38 the U.S. against a particular country or industry. For political reasons, we chose the elbows up
00:34:46 approach, and that's going to create a lot of long-term damage to the economy. We see it more
00:34:56 and more companies, domestic companies, foreign companies saying, gee, if I want access to the
00:35:04 U.S. market, where am I going to invest? Where am I going to set up a facility or a supply chain?
00:35:11 It's not Canada. It's the U.S. And as the U.S., you're going to see more and more repatriation
00:35:19 of industrial activity, we're going to see a hollowing out, an increasing hollowing out
00:35:27 of our industrial capacity. And we're going to become more dependent on being hewers of
00:35:32 wood or draws of water, whatever the class expression is. We're going to be more dependent
00:35:39 on resources, less dependent on manufacturing and services. That was a tactical, I think a
00:35:49 policy error made in November 2024 is perpetuated, and we're going to be increasingly paying that
00:35:56 price. Maybe at some point, we'll come to our senses, where we're going to have to then work
00:36:02 out a deal with the U.S. that gives investors sufficient confidence that some future U.S.
00:36:08 president doesn't try to block access to the U.S. for Canadian companies.
00:36:13 yeah no no i totally agree with you on that one so does it leave that's interesting because you
00:36:22 know we've we've tackled a couple things the challenges of capital for entrepreneurs and
00:36:27 for companies the hollowing out really because the backfilling we naturally you think fred that
00:36:33 those companies that are um non-existent or you know the imports that we're not getting because
00:36:40 of the counter tariffs and everything else we we backfill those companies and those goods but
00:36:46 that's going to be that's definitely going to become harder to happen because of the recreation
00:36:50 of new companies and that's that's an interesting challenge that we i think we're still struggling
00:36:55 with fixing or still trying to figure out a solution to as we go forward as i said one of
00:37:02 the few advantages of age in my cases i've been through all of these i was involved in debates
00:37:10 on free trade in the 70s i was involved in uh the discussions uh of the kind of u.s free trade
00:37:18 agreement uh tangentially involved in sort of the nafta 1.0 i've seen this i've been involved in
00:37:26 other activities you put them all together after a while you develop a better understanding of our
00:37:33 productivity problem our competitive problem our fiscal problems so you know i've i've had the
00:37:41 advantage and the good fortune of being able to talk and meet with a lot of really interesting
00:37:49 knowledgeable people you know uh how did i learn about anything who are the top people in the field
00:37:56 i went out and talked to them that's how you learn it's not as if i sat somewhere and said
00:38:02 let me think about it i've got the perfect solution no i've always been a firm believer
00:38:08 what's research 95 you steal ideas from others and then you add your five percent to it
00:38:16 and that's how i've operated and i've been lucky in finding the right 95 most of the time
00:38:21 oh that's great well thank you fred i really appreciate you know if you taking the time today
00:38:29 you know as things evolve i'd love to get you back on the show because really it's it's you
00:38:33 know as you mentioned this is a month by month day by day issue um you know with the blue now
00:38:39 that the democrats you know have taken control of the senate and the house it'll be interesting to
00:38:45 see if there is movement if there is you know a consolidated shift in what they even want to do
00:38:52 so that's an interesting you know and uh probably for another show as we as we watch this roll out
00:38:58 but quite frankly to sit down and say okay you know it's been 60 days we've seen the democrats
00:39:04 take control um you know the house and the senate is it is there any movement on fixing this and if
00:39:11 there's not why not because that's a you know um i'd love to have that show for another day
00:39:18 well it'll be a pleasure look my views being uh the taxpayer has basically paid my salary for a
00:39:25 long time i owe it back to the taxpayers of society to add my two cents worth on any particular
00:39:33 subject uh doesn't mean i'm necessarily right but let me contribute to the debate uh let others
00:39:41 continue to debate and eventually we'll figure out some type of solution so i'll be pleased to do so
00:39:47 yeah thank you and tpl media you know fred when we set it up that was really the idea is to get
00:39:53 people like you and and you know sit down and have those discussions so thanks for taking the time
00:39:58 and hope to see you soon.
00:40:01 Thank you very much for this opportunity.
00:40:02 It was a pleasure.