Questions Without Answers

JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES Editor Associate Editors Editorial Assistants Editorial Board RALPH HEINTZMAN DAYID CAMERON JOHN WADLAND ARLENE DAVIS MARGARET PEARCE JEAN-PIERRE LAPOINTE MARGARET LAURENCE HARVEY McCUE JACQUES MONET, S.J. W.L. MORTON W.F.W. NEVILLE GORDON ROPER DONALD V. SMILEY DENIS SMITH PHILIP STRATFORD T.H.B. SYMONS W.E. TAYLOR CLARA THOMAS MELVILLE H. WATKINS ALAN WILSON Questions Without Answers REVUE D'ETUDES CANADIENNES Directeur Directeurs adjoints Assistantes Comite de redaction Plus 9a change in Canada, plus c'est la meme chose. The historian who looks at contemporary Canadian life should be forgiven for thinking that nothing is ever settled in our country, that every generation debates the same four issues in the same way: in our internal affairs, the perennial issues are those of the relations between the two linguistic communities and between the federal and provincial governments (or between central Canada and the regional hinterlands); in external affairs, they are our relations with Europe and with the United States. to watch reruns of 1891 or 1911, though with a different cast (one looks in vain for Sir George Foster!) and with the prospect of a very different outcome. In the first months of 1978, it is the fourth one, the issue of continentalism, which has raised its head once again and overwhelmed us with a sensation of deja vu. We seem to be settling back Journal ofCanadian Studies As everyone knows, the seventies have been a difficult time for the Canadian economy. On the eve of the centenary of the National Policy, the orthodoxies of Canadian political economy seem to have failed us. Despite incomparable natural resources, high technical skills, and other social advantages, our manufacturing industries have not, by and large, achieved levels of productivity which would allow them to become competitive in international markets. Industrial growth has become so sluggish in recent years that some observers have even begun to speak of the "de-industrialization" of Canadian society. And as the world begins to arrange itself into a few large and fiercely competitive trading blocks, Canada suddenly finds itself on the outside looking in. The one major economy to which it might realistically turn is the very one which poses the greatest threat to its social, cultural, and political integrity - and perhaps to its unity as well. Is there no way out of this dilemma? Perhaps one way out might have been through the Trudeau government's so-called "Third Option'' in foreign policy, a policy whose supposed aim was to reduce Canada's reliance on the American economy by developing alternative links with the European economic community. In theory, this was an attractive proposal, even if it was a tarted-up version of one of the oldest chestnuts in Canadian politics - and a Conservative one at that! As we pointed out in the last issue of the Journal, it was the original orientation of the Canadian economy toward the NorthAtlantic and the markets of Europe which spawned the economic empire of the St. Lawrence and led eventually to the creation of Canada in its present, political form. Anything which reinforces that pattern also serves to strengthen the autonomy and integrity of the Canadian state; and the Trudeau government was to be applauded for applying this historic insight, even if it did so without conviction. Unfortunately, there is now good reason to question whether the policy is really a practical one. Despite decades of talk about trade diversification , we have very little to show for it. Canadian exports to the United States are more than five times greater than those to Europe, and the volume of exports to the U.S. is growing at a faster rate, the so-called "contractual link" with the Common Market notwithstanding. Since the establishment of the link in 1975, the proportion of our exports destined for the U.S. has risen . continuously from 64.7% of the total in 1975 to 67.7OJo in 1976 and 69.4OJo in 1977. Moreover, our exports to Europe are, in a sense, the wrong kind: that is to say, natural resources instead of finished products. Less than lOOJo of our exports to Europe are manufactured goods, compared to...