With Canada’s assumptions about the world – a stable U.S., ever-deepening Canada-U.S. trade, peace in Europe, secure shipping lanes, an end to great power conflict, soft power predominating over hard power – all having been proven either incorrect or questionable at best, we need ambitious thinking to reorient ourselves for a much different future.
Old partisan debates and divisions are a luxury we don’t have at the moment. Instead, we need to praise and advance good ideas, regardless of where they come from.
With that top of mind, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew’s nation-building plan is worth discussing.
In a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney, Kinew released five nation-building projects that, while centred on Manitoba, could strengthen Canada as a whole.
Here’s what Kinew is proposing:
- A One Canada Trade Corridor to diversify Canada’s trade through the Port of Churchill.
- A joint provincial-federal investment to strengthen the promotion of Western Canadian agricultural products.
- A Canada Trucking Corridor – Twinning the Trans-Canada Highway and strengthening Manitoba’s connection to Ontario to deepen trade between Eastern and Western Canada.
- Investment in Critical Minerals Infrastructure by fast-tracking exploration and extraction through partnership with Indigenous nations and investment in highways, transmission lines, Hudson Bay, ports, and airports.
- Indigenous Fair Trade Zones – Inland ports exempt from tariffs.
You can read Kinew’s full letter below:
These ideas could have come from a Conservative or Liberal Premier. They are pro-business, recognize the importance of including Indigenous nations in Canada’s prosperity, strengthen interprovincial trade, thus reducing our reliance on the U.S., and would help to build a stronger, more sovereign Canada.
Further, these nation-building plans are largely common sense. It’s only in the Canadian context, where we coasted for so long assuming prosperity was automatic, that they seem bold. Utilizing the Port of Churchill, promoting our high-quality agricultural products, deepening internal trade, profiting from critical minerals, and unleashing commerce in Indigenous nations are all steps Canada should have been taking years ago.
That said, we can’t change the past. We can only move forward. And ambitious proposals like those outlined by Premier Kinew are part of that process.
Unlocking Canada’s potential
While this chaotic time holds significant risk for Canada, it is also a time of opportunity. Canada has tremendous potential wealth waiting to be unlocked if we have the will to do so.
To understand why our potential is so great, consider that Canada, the U.S., and Russia are among the most resource-rich nations on Earth. Russian natural resources are valued at $75 trillion (Russia’s substandard economic performance, despite this immense potential wealth, is one of the best arguments against authoritarianism and autocracy), while U.S. natural resources are valued at $45 trillion. Canada’s overall resource wealth is lower, at $33.2 trillion.
However, when you adjust for our population, Canada’s per capita resource wealth is roughly $830K, compared to about $520K for Russia and $130K for the U.S.
Were we to rapidly expand our resource extraction and refinement, and enhance our infrastructure to get those resources to markets across the globe, our country could experience a significant economic boom. And if we put a portion of the profits from that boom toward investment in education, national defence, and research & development (particularly drones and artificial intelligence), we could use our natural resource wealth to gain a long-term advantage in the economy of the future.
Seizing this opportunity requires leadership that sees beyond partisan labels and old ideological disputes. Good ideas are good ideas, regardless of what party or level of government they come from. The kind of ambitious and prosperity-focused thinking on display from Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew is what Canada needs, and we should welcome it.
Spencer Fernando
Image – YouTube
If this piece left you clearer than it found you, that's the point. I write for readers who want to think past the week, to see the longer pattern beneath the daily story, and to come away steadier rather than more agitated.
That longer view gets built somewhere. On Patreon, essay by essay, I'm constructing The Long Work, a body of analysis meant to outlast the news cycle that prompted it. The readers there make it possible. No subsidies, no strings. The work answers to them.
$8/month to read it as it's built, and to have a hand in building it.