For a long time I have been watching terrible economic decisions being made. Decisions, whereby ‘shareholder return’ trumps the needs of country. Contrary to what many might believe of me; I do not believe free market capitalist is always the answer or the sole answer. Those free market capitalists, far too often, put profit and net return before quality of human life.
As a conservative, I perhaps better understand than my progressive peers that ‘human nature’ remains unremarkably changed as its core – despite the best efforts of our modern social engineering experts. It is almost a 100 years since the Triangle Shirtwaist fire ravaged the garment of district of New York City. This was the face, and consequence, of unfettered capitalism in action.
I doubt you could find a Canadian which would willing return to those days with its lack of labour and safety laws, and yet, we seem to be so willing to engage in trade with countries where those very same conditions that lead to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire over a hundred years ago, not only exist, but are part and parcel of the daily economic life of those nations.
The Toronto Star, last year, ran a remarkable article on the granite sidewalks of downtown Bloor Street in Toronto. The granite sidewalks should be a cautionary tale for all Canadians on the dangers of free trade with unequal partners.
The granite – named Atlantic Black and Atlantic Grey – was quarried and finished in Quebec. But it nearly came from a seemingly unlikely source: China. In what amounts to a coals-to-Newcastle yarn of astonishing proportions, granite cut and finished in China has recently taken the lion’s share of the Toronto construction market, whether it’s for pavers, tiles, wall cladding or the countertops in highrise condominiums.
Those in the Canadian industry like to joke that granite quarried in China comes in three colours – grey, grey and grey. But most of the granite materials produced by Chinese companies began as massive blocks of brightly coloured granite that were quarried elsewhere, in Brazil, South Africa and sometimes even Canada.
This stretch of Bloor might also have been paved in granite from China were it not for the pique of Radovan Kovacevic, whose Interex Marble Ltd. represents Quebec’s A. Lacroix et Fils Granit Ltee. It’s not just that Kovacevic had already lost too many bidding wars to those supplying Chinese granite. He calls this neighbourhood home. “I live here and I said, `I’m in this business and I’m not going to wake up in the morning and go on the street and see Chinese (granite),’” he says. “I wouldn’t even walk on Bloor St.”
To win the contract, Kovacevic says he essentially surrendered all of his profit and relied on Lacroix’s reputation for quality and fast service. Forget that much of Canada sits on granite, not least the great Canadian Shield that’s never far from the surface in the eastern half of the country. It’s about cost, the hard place where “buy local” slogans collide with an unforgiving market, even in the unlikely realm of granite.
Production costs are so low, and Chinese government assistance so generous, that Chinese firms can afford to buy granite from halfway around the world, ship it home, cut it into finished pieces, ship it back around the globe and still sell the resulting product for at least 40 per cent less than comparable granite manufactured here. “The Chinese are coming in and they’re cutting us here, there,” says Kovacevic. “I don’t know what the future is going to look like. Probably not very good.”
When you outsource manufacturing jobs to third world economies; your homegrown blue collar workers lose their jobs. Even worse than the loss of tax payers to a nation’s tax base is that those blue collar workers end up collecting national employment insurance. By the time EI benefits expire, only ‘some’ blue collar workers will have found work or been retrained.
When the largest demand for blue collar workers in Canada is found in industries which ask the age old question; “Do you want fries with that?” and most of those positions are currently filled by guest workers, illegals or family sponsored low-skills immigrants; what future is there for Canadian blue collar workers other than welfare recipient?
When Canadian white collar workers, who were previously employed in such places as call service centres or clerical workers have their semi-skilled jobs outsourced to third world countries in the name of providing value for ‘shareholders’– where can you realistically expect those Canadians to find employment when their Employment Insurance benefits end?
As a country, we no longer produce much of anything – other than hot air. National self-sufficiency has been sacrificed on the altar global capitalism which is all well and good except for one thing. Not every Canadian is capably of acquiring the necessary skill sets beyond their intellectual capacity, and this conservative, is rather tired to picking up the slack when manufacturers and producers take their operations to the third world and leave me footing the bill for their ‘shareholder value’.
Sure, I can buy a toaster ‘Made in China’ for a quarter of what it can be produced locally in Canada, but what good is it; when more and more of my income is gobbled up in taxes to support those Canadians who no longer can find employment which will provide them with the basics a living in Canada?
I’d much rather pay more for a Canadian made toaster and keep all three levels of government out of my pocket book and my fellow citizens working. As a conservative, I am rather tired of bailing out dinosaur industries like the automakers. As a country, we were forced to bail out those industries as otherwise there would be literally thousands of Canadians left destitute with no blue collar jobs to replace those that were lost when the big three automakers sunk under the weight of their collective economic hubris.
As a conservative, I was always thought of myself more as a ‘free-trade’ kind of gal…except how free is free trade when no distinction is made between unequal trading fields? I can understand the net stockholder benefit and net benefit to the third world ecomonies, and while the benefit to the Canadian consumer might result in initial lower product cost, but what good is lower costs; when my take home pay is slowly eroded through various taxes in order to keep my fellow Canadians on the dole? Eventually, that cheap toaster will be beyond even what I can afford to pay.
If there is one lesson to be learned from the consequences of unfettered capitalism it is that one should never rely on the moral character of any capitalist to do anything other than what increases their fiscal bottom-line. All of which is my long-winded way of saying why this conservative Canadian patriot will be taking a hard look at the provincial NDP campaign of Andrea Horwath. She seems to be the only politician who is interested in balancing the needs of Ontario citizens with the needs of business.
In a campaign swing through northern Ontario, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath vowed to stop resources mined in the province from being exported if they can be processed here.
“Companies are pulling them out of the ground and shipping them elsewhere for processing and it doesn’t have to be that way,” Horwath said Monday from Dubreuilville, Ont. “We need to be conscious about what is happening with our natural resources. It helps us put some control over how much of our resources get processed and it creates good jobs for Ontario families.” Horwath said the time to secure mining and resource jobs is now as Ontario begins to develop the Ring of Fire, a $30 billion chromite deposit nearly 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay. (The Toronto Star)
In this coming provincial election, the voters need to choose, not between Conservatives or Liberals political philosophies as much as choosing their nation over idealogical economic purity.
