Canada: The Influencer of Nations

We consider it more important for us to broadcast that we have the right values, than to actually accomplish or create anything of value

Looking back at my most recent posts, I seem to be particularly bothered by the general inertia of our society.

This relates to my reflections on Covid-era issues that are still relevant today (as they were never just about Covid) - in that my general skepticism towards the Canadian Covid response was largely caused by our lethargic governments’ continued inaction, during what they were telling us was a crisis.

Even though Covid never seemed all that scary to me, even in the beginning - I initially gave our leaders the benefit of the doubt. I thought it was possible that details about the virus weren't being disclosed publicly to avoid panic. I also fully understood the need to spread out the impact on our hospitals.

They lost me, however, when they clearly weren't acting on the idea that, during these closures, we were preparing our institutions and resources for impact.

At all levels of government, I never saw the sort of fire I would expect in a real emergency (nor a rush to retreat to their bunkers, which is probably what they really would have done, if they themselves were actually afraid).

Instead, they took the relative path of least resistance - close everything, concentrate all attention and resources on enabling this bandaid mitigation, and then just wait and hope.

It's easy to mistake the level of disruption this caused for unprecedented government action - when in reality, our governments, especially the federal government, merely offered deceptively simple solutions to very complex problems. Our bloated bureaucracy jumped at the chance to do less and rely on the public more.

While I'll probably never fully understand why we did this, since it was a confluence of so many factors - I am sure at least a part of the reason was that we typically prefer to lead not by ideas, but by promoting popular policies (as lockdowns were at the time). Canadians measure our self-worth by how we look on the world stage.

This phenomenon is evident in a myriad of other areas. Our nation talks a lot, but has few effective solutions to any of its problems (other than helicopter money, which we love - see: the federal dental “plan”).

We have too many bureaucrats in Canada, who are far too preoccupied with minutiae rather than the big picture. Thus, thought leadership from foreign sources is important to us, as is the recognition they provide when our menial contributions are praised.

It is for this reason that our government, in so many areas, assumes the announcement of a project ensures its success. This is the farthest we are capable of taking our own ideas (and arguably, truly as far as we think they need to go).

For us, actual innovation is someone else's responsibility. We love to get in our own way when it comes to any locally-driven change here in Toronto, yet once almost entrusted Google with the vision of a (dystopian) new urban neighborhood within the heart of the city. We fall all over ourselves every time a company like Amazon contemplates opening its headquarters here. We brought in a foreign vaccine producer like Moderna, rather than improving our own capabilities. We even almost allowed ourselves to be used as lab rats for a vaccine developed by a brutal regime like China.

We like things we think we can count on, without regard for what we could amount to - that’s why we like to invest in real estate, rather than our own people and ideas.

I thought of this when our Prime Minister questioned the "business case" for providing liquefied natural gas to Europe. Besides being patently absurd - there is of course a business case, but it would require more effort than a relatively passive source of money such as an inflated real estate bubble - this demonstrates perfectly both our arrogance about our place in the world, as well as our unwillingness to work to earn it.

It further illustrates how slow we are to adapt to changing circumstances, thinking it is more important to signal our moral superiority when it comes to climate change than to support our NATO partners by providing the resources they need to decouple from Putin and other dangerous regimes. It is beyond our scenario planning capabilities to realize that effective climate policy must also be geopolitically sustainable.

I put this down to what has been (aptly) described as our branch plant mindset. Our mistake is to confuse bringing in foreign companies that are big players in global technology with competing in big tech ourselves. Although opening a Google or Amazon branch might bring jobs, their value is trivial compared to the research and intellectual property we provide these multinationals (which we are unable to monetize for ourselves).

Our tendency is to overvalue what we perceive to be easy and reliable right now, to the extent that we are afraid to take risks that would secure prosperity and stability in the future. But getting too comfortable in this way puts our future comfort at risk.

Even our healthcare system reflects this. For decades, we have known that an aging population would cause problems, yet the system remains completely unprepared - since raising taxes and/or rethinking the system over time would have been uncomfortable, compared to simply touting it as morally superior to private healthcare.

The idea that we have truly universal healthcare is itself more of an announcement than a reality. We don't cover pharmacare, dental care, or physical therapy, and barely cover mental health services or eye care, here in Ontario. Even so, we quite enjoy our reputation as a nation with universal healthcare - and thus feel compelled to oppose private delivery of public healthcare, even when the alternative is unacceptably long wait times for any care at all. 

To concede meaningful change would be to admit there is a problem. We prefer to hype the fact that healthcare spending by the federal government over the next decade will reach $196 billion. Never mind the fact that only $46 billion of that is actually new funding, and that it amounts to little more than a steady increase in the federal contribution spread across all provinces over a ten-year period. Those are details that don’t fit in a headline.

It seems that people do notice such details, despite our best efforts. Since 2001, the number of permanent residents becoming Canadian citizens has plummeted. Statscan does not identify the reasons for the drop. However, individuals who are considering committing to Canada must undoubtedly take into consideration the reality of healthcare, cost of living, and job prospects.

Our allies also seem to be noticing we are a lot of hot air. Analysts have speculated that Canada's exclusion from "AUKUS" (a security pact between Australia, the UK and the US) may be an indication of frustration over Ottawa's perceived failure to toughen up on China. 

I can’t imagine this was helped by the revelation today from CSIS that China employed a sophisticated strategy to disrupt Canada's 2021 federal election. I also doubt our Prime Minister inspired much confidence by having chosen to respond to this by myopically emphasizing that "the integrity of our elections in 2019 and 2021 has not been compromised". In spite of not having a significant impact on the election outcome, the interference effort still matters, and needs to be addressed rather than downplayed.

I can imagine that our Prime Minister's more recent statement that he “ordered” a US fighter jet to shoot down a balloon over northern Canada, rather than requesting, authorizing, or approving the action, probably went down like a lead balloon as well. It wasn't enough to take the assist - we had to announce it as if we were leading the operation.

If we were truly a secure country, instead of akin to an insecure influencer, we'd focus more on responding to threats and less on either claiming undue credit, or trying to minimize the importance of inconvenient truths.

The reasons for our need to appear more influential than we actually are are many. Apparently, we don't actually belong in the G7 anymore - we should have been replaced by India years ago, by objective measure. As speculated at The Hub - I also wonder if possibly being expelled from that club might be a good thing, since it could force Canadian leadership to think about whether we have more to offer the world than governing by press release.

Being so focused on messaging is far from benign. Because we are all talk, we put a lot of value on talk - and this is why we are beginning to treat dissenting opinions as threats.

This is beginning to play out now with Bill C-11, aimed at forcing government-approved content to take precedence over what people want to see. As part of a previous round of online consultations for an online harms bill, the federal government even filtered out feedback from individuals who didn't agree with the need for the bill itself (which is expected to be tabled this year). 

It has also long been my suspicion that this is really what prompted us to invoke the Emergencies Act. We didn't look in charge, and our closest allies clearly noticed that - which panicked the government. We were very worried about our reputation as a reliable trading partner. That was what posed the biggest threat - the optics of the convoy.

Optics also explain why the government refused to sit down or speak with convoy participants - and why our Prime Minister felt comfortable describing those taking part as a “fringe” in Canada with “unacceptable views”. Our country's international reputation for embracing Covid restrictions was really important to us. Our almost evangelical embrace of masks also makes sense in this context.

As a country, we should care less about how we look and more about what holds us together.

This is my main disappointment with the Public Order Emergency Commission's conclusion that using the Emergencies Act to deal with the convoy protests was appropriate. As with the idea of being relegated from the G7 - being embarrassed by the results of the inquiry may have actually compelled us to change.

Rather, I worry the report's results might set a precedent for the very behavior it outlined led to the need to use the Emergencies Act. Essentially, the failure of politicians and police to respond appropriately to lawful protests early on led to problems compounding into an emergency that could only be resolved by the Act.

Consequently, our leaders have learned that if they fail to act, then wait to see things spiral out of control, they will be justified in invoking powers to crack down on citizens that they wouldn't normally have - so much easier than thinking through an appropriate response early on and acting within the normal rule of law!

I wonder how this may extend to the way the government will choose to use things like Bill C-11 and the impending online harms bill - after all, it would probably be much easier to crack down on anyone expressing dissent about our country's myriad problems, than it would be to actually try to solve them.

More likely than not, they will choose the option that helps them project the image they want people to see immediately, rather than doing the hard work necessary to change the big picture over time.

Thus, I fear the only way to compel change from our leaders is to cast their actions in a bad light on the world stage. Despite the Emergencies Act inquiry being a missed opportunity, perhaps something like the CSIS documents revealing Chinese strategy to influence the 2021 election could still inspire change. Currently, our glossy global profile masks our insecurities far too well.