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I think I'm more pro-industrial policy than most economists, but this is a steaming pile of garbage: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/erin-o-toole-pnp-interview-1.5716115?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar #cdnecon #cdnpoli #econtwitter
To elaborate: the one plank of the National Policy was to impose tariffs on manufacturing goods, most notably agricultural machinery, to foster industrialization in Canada 1/n #cdnecon #econtwitter
The governments of the day wanted to transform Canada from a relatively poor agrarian and resource-based economy, to a more prosperous mixed one. 2/n #cdnecon #EconTwitter
Note, the governments also needed the tariff revenue. Tax bases were limited (e.g., no income tax), and once the construction of the transnational railway began, the gov't needed the funds 3/n #cdnecon #EconTwitter
What Canada did wasn't particularly novel (Italy did the same contemporaneously), but it was one of the more successful at achieving the desired end 4/n #cdnecon #EconTwitter
And it was not without controversy. Probably the best of the early critics was @usask's Vernon Fowke, who argued that without the National Policy, Canada would've had fewer people, less industry, but a higher per capita income 5/n #cdnecon #EconTwitter
Though, it's probably undeniable that the National Policy allowed some industries to develop, and fostered productivity: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014498315000133 #cdnecon #EconTwitter 6/n
But the problem we face today is fundamentally different. Industrialization is not the golden ticket to prosperity. It's part of our past, a past in which we were, on average, less prosperous that we are today 7/n #cdnecon #EconTwitter
What we need is to transition people displaced by de-industrialization, while reducing our dangerous over-reliance on the resource (read: oil) sector 8/n #cdnecon #econtwitter
And in that regard, pursuing a policy of self-sufficiency does nothing, or "Canada First" does nothing. It's populist nonsense that will leave us all poorer. 9/9 #cdnecon #econtwitter
The governments of the day were trying to transform Canada from a relatively poor agrarian society, to a more prosperous mixed economy. 2/n #cdnecon #econtwitter
