China’s decision to slap duties on Canadian canola is meant to send a message: submit to removing the tariff on Chinese EVs, or pay the price. For too long, Beijing has treated Canadian farmers as pawns in a geopolitical chess game. But this time, the message should go the other way. Canada holds the trump card. If we call China’s bluff, absorb the short-term cost, and invest in value-added capacity, we can break the cycle of economic coercion once and for all.
This is a wish dream.
Canada’s Titans of industry are corporate welfare bums unwilling to invest to improve productivity.
Instead they live it up behind a gated community of government supported cartels, tax payer subsidies, interprovincial trade barriers and the import of masses of unskilled labour.
This is what the Elbow people are protecting.
