Canada’s Five Frontiers: Time for a Change

Canada, a country with a smaller population than California, features the second largest land mass in the world, thousands of kilometres of coastal shoreline, water and natural resources in abundance, and a huge arctic geography where, for over a century, there was minimal predatory interest from other countries. But most Canadians live and earn a living within a few hundred kilometres of the US border. We’ve enjoyed easy prosperity doing business directly or indirectly with Americans, to whom we’ve defaulted to do the heavy lifting on defence and security.

In terms of air, water and ground transportation, Canada has enormous gateway potential

Old assumptions are now crumbling. Other world powers are now fixating on the arctic, our borders are at risk, and our dependence on integrated North American markets has become a vulnerability. This, at a time when our economic performance has declined precipitously for over a decade as we denigrated our highly productive natural resource base as a ‘curse’.

Time for a change.

Perhaps the most urgent priority is to invigorate border security, particularly in coastal and arctic waters. And, while we will, of necessity, have to participate with the US on North American security, Canada needs a stronger, stand-alone capability. That means Coast Guard and military capabilities spanning our entire border and landmass.

Secondly, geo-positioning puts Canada on the shortest trajectory from much of Asia and Russia to the continental United States. That provides a natural advantage as a trade and travel gateway between North America and the world’s fastest-growing and most populous countries. In terms of air, water and ground transportation, Canada has enormous gateway potential. Canadian ports, airports, railways and road systems can be competitive gateways linking Asia and North America. While progress has been made across all modes of transportation, there is still much more that is possible.

Less favourable, however, is the fact that Canada is also the shortest distance to the heart of North America for missiles, bombers and other military threats between the US and both Russia and China. America has long recognized this, and for many years, has invested heavily to counter the threat. Canada has been a partner, but a junior partner, in the provision of continental security.

Managing risks and developing the ‘great north, strong and free’ won’t come easily

Third, we need to recognize and capitalize on our inherent advantages in a broad range of natural resources and land-based industries, such as agriculture. These are not ‘old economy’ industries, they are sophisticated, high-technology sectors that are critical to wealth creation and are themselves users and developers of leading-edge technology.

It is also true that over half of Canada’s indigenous people live in small communities and remote areas. These are areas where durable economic opportunities are largely driven off the land and resource base. A natural resources renaissance would open real opportunities for indigenous people to participate in the economic mainstream, as employees, contractors and owners.

Fourth, managing risks and developing the ‘great north, strong and free’ won’t come easily. Such massive, rugged and dispersed landscapes and waterways cannot be managed at ground level, through road and rail access. Air access will be critical and requires a robust critical mass of aviation services and support.

But beyond conventional air service and aviation infrastructure, there is a critical need for a global surveillance capacity using space-related technologies, such as satellite systems, to monitor weather, natural disturbances, intrusions in remote areas and much more. Canada was once one of the world’s most advanced leaders in space-related technologies but we’re losing ground. That must change.

Intellectual property is highly mobile, transferable and subject to theft

Finally, although it seems obvious, it’s a maturing age of disruptive technologies and ideas. Those who innovate, explore and discover new and potentially valuable technologies and concepts need to be rewarded and enabled to prosper from success. Intellectual property is highly mobile, transferable and subject to theft.

Without protection, the creators of such property will migrate to the large markets where they can prosper from their work. Canada is a small market and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Under each of these five pillars, numerous strategic public investments are to be made; however, there is perhaps the most important thing to consider. Capital is not available in unlimited amounts in either the public or private sector. Whether investing in a port, an airport, a space asset, a rail line, a pipeline, a utility, or a technology, the first test should be to enlist private investment, whole or in partnership.

The private sector will outperform the government in terms of capital deployment and sound management. A public-private partnership can work to expand capital availability, but risk-reward assessment and decisions must involve ‘skin in the game’, not just a technocrat spending the money of an uninvolved taxpayer.

David Emerson is the former MP for Vancouver Kingsway. He served as Minister of Industry, Minister of International Trade, and Minister of Foreign Affairs under two prime ministers. He writes here for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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