I'm not saying that any of the above answers are wrong, but I don't know if any of them are addressing the original concern. We are heavily reliant on the extraction of our natural resources, and we produce almost no finished product. When the demand for our resources diminish, the countries that do our refining and manufacturing can look for more localized sources for their raw goods, to save on transport and stabilize the lowered demand. We will be left with no structure in place to move to another sector to maintain the strength of our economy.
The private sector is what has created this disparity, and I don't know if they have an interest in looking forward to a drop in resource value, in terms of its effect on the Canadian worker. They would simply concentrate on the countries where they have already established a manufacturing base.
Would something along the lines of decreasing (or simply enforcing) incentives to companies dealing in resource extraction, and increasing the incentives for growing the manufacturing sector work? Royalties for many oil sands and other projects still sit at 5% due to lawyerly brilliance on their part, when the cap is at 35%. A transfer of that money into manufacturing should be enough to keep us competitive, and not raise prices above the global market.
|