I forget the exact words but the gist of the first speakers message was that it would be against the interests of business to impose harsh restrictions on the immigratiion of any ethnic or national groups. He claimed also that we should celebrate ethnic diversity within Canada. Having business people from Hong Kong, China, Pakistan or wherever established links worldwide that gave us a competitive advantage in global markets.
The second speaker pleaded for politicians and others not to opt for a fortress America approach, of attempting to draw an iron ring of security around the continent by adopting extremely extensive and costly security checks applied to anyone and anything crossing the borders of the continent or between countries.
It is easy to see the self-interested motives behind these speeches: the need for low-cost labor from other countries, superior access to global markets, regulations that will smooth and facilitate global trade rather than slow it down and hamper it. Nevertheless, in the context of some other reactions to events the remarks are remarkably progressive. Just after these speeches the news came on. One of the first interviews was with some pundit whosuggested the Fortress America approach was obviously the right one to solve the security problem.
Whatever the economic approach to the crisis it seems that it will in practice involve a wholesale jettisoning of any pretence of establishing some free-market ideal.There will be more and more elements of a command economy. Production will be decided upon political grounds rather than free market forces. Not that there was ever a free market to begin with. Subsidies to agriculture already abound but subsidies will be extended to other areas as well such as airlines. It is not the free market that needs to be saved it is capitalism as a system.
Cheers, Ken Hanly