The Crisis in Canadian Manufacturing

It is always amusing to read the Toronto Star—I haven’t seen a paper copy for years, but picked one up while in Canada this summer. It is like stepping into a different world. One that might have been familiar to Alice Liddell, as a little girl, when she sat on the knee of Lewis Carroll.

There was Carol Goar ringing the secular church bells in alarm over the crisis in Canada’s manufacturing sector (“Lean times in industrial heartland,” Star, July 27th). Apparently—who knew?—they are in decline; manufacturing is moving offshore. Something must be done—and it must, she stresses, be done by the federal government specifically. She notes that government has shovelled quite a few million to a few corporations already, speaking approvingly of $150 million given by Ontario to the forestry industry. Never mind that forestry is not actually manufacturing—all government money is good. But this is far too little. Even the billion plus given to the auto sector is, for Goar, far too little. We need more government spending, and more transfer of funds from the poor to big corporations; that goes without saying.

I can’t but feel from this that the Canadian left—the Star’s constituency—is living in the past. The decline in Canadian manufacturing is news? I am in my fifties now, and I have been aware of it all my life. The town I grew up in used to have forty different manufacturing concerns. It now has two, and earns its living from tourism. This fifty-year time lag in reporting the “news” tallies nicely with the recent uproar on the left (recent meaning to me within the last month, not the last century) about what was in the Catholic Latin mass before the 1950s. Indeed, the left generally gives the feeling that they have not yet emerged from the Great Depression. Perhaps they never will.

And it is indeed not just Goar, or just the Toronto Star. It must be more that coincidence that, speaking on the phone the next day to one of my leftist friends, and noting how prosperous Toronto is looking these days, he responded that it was all illusory, because in fact Canada is losing its manufacturing. Manufacturing is apparently the only real source of wealth.

No doubt many thought the same two hundred years ago—that Britain was heading to hell in a handcart with all these new factories, because it was losing its agricultural base. Land was the only real source of wealth. But we used at least to call that kind of thinking what it was—conservatism. To the modern left, doom is always just around the corner, and we must run backwards as fast as we can just to stay in the same place.

And no evidence of increasing Canadian prosperity, no matter how dramatic, can be real. Things must always be going from bad to worse to worst. If it isn’t global cooling, it’s global warming. If it isn’t desertification, it’s the shrinking deserts. All change is frightening. Only the status quo is good.

Of course, there really is a long-term decline in Canadian manufacturing; no dispute there. Canada is broadly moving from manufacturing into services, as manufacturing moves offshore.

To leftists like Goar, of course, “services” means only one thing: flipping burgers at McDonald’s. (As Goar puts it, “low wage jobs in the retail or hospitality sector.”) Not a bad job at all, really, a lot more fun than factory work, with better chance of advancement; but leftists hate McDonald’s. They have the prejudice of all idle elites against the stain of “commerce.” Pleasant and opportunity-full as a future at McDonald’s really is, though, in the real world, “services” also means banking, insurance, medicine, layering, accounting—not especially poorly-paying positions. And many good blue-collar jobs in transportation—trucking, for example, Canada’s single most common occupation. Indeed, the more manufacturing moves offshore, the more jobs there will be in transportation. Others of a blue collar bent might similarly enjoy piloting, air traffic control, barbering, cosmeticianship, construction, plumbing, electrical work, auto repair, boat repair, and on and on. All experiencing shortages, all well-paying, all services.

And, as Goar does not mention, or does not notice, that the same people also have growing opportunities in the resource sector. This cannot move offshore; and Canada’s uranium mines and oil patch are booming.

Leftists will argue, and Goar does argue, that, regardless of what other, better, jobs might be available, the average manufacturing factory worker does not have the skills for them (and, patronizingly enough, they believe the average factory worker does not have the intellect to learn them).

Now, this if true is only a problem if the decline in manufacturing is happening faster than the retirement rate can naturally reduce is workforce. Can this be true if the decline in manufacturing has been going on for at least fifty years? No, it cannot—anyone in manufacturing when the trend first became visible is already retired. If there was a problem, by now it is necessarily solved.

Conversely, anyone in manufacturing now has had their entire lifetimes to adjust; and has gone in aware of this issue, and taking it into consideration. Are they really, then, in need of and deserving of government help, which is to say, being supported financially by the rest of us? Are we obliged to save them from their own conscious choices?

Okay, let’s even say yes—and suppose that the money we have available to help others is unlimited, that there is no question even of setting priorities. Even so, if the decline in the manufacturing workforce is really faster than retirement can reduce it without dislocation, and manufacturing workers are really incapable of learning other work, this should logically show up in higher unemployment figures. Instead, the Canadian unemployment rate is down over the past fifty years or so, as Goar herself admits, with no sign of a recent jump. Despite the fact that the mass migration of women into the workforce over the same period ought logically to require twice as many jobs to be created, even leaving aside the growth in population from about twenty to about thirty million. With a growth in average income.

Odd, if there is a crisis at hand, that we have absolutely no evidence of it.

Goar and other leftists argue, in fact, that the apparent rise in jobs and employment masks people being forced to take worse jobs—i.e., flipping burgers at McDonald’s. (Perhaps even, God forbid, in the natural progression of things, ending up owning and operating their own McDonald’s outlet, or string of outlets.)

Let us even accept the dubious claim that former manufacturing employees are now commonly flipping burgers. It seems to me unlikely, since the people I see behind the counter at McD’s seem far too young to have had much seniority in any previous job. But let’s assume they are. Let’s even assume that working at McD’s is really a worse job than working in a factory—having worked both in a factory and in retail myself, I find this claim incredible, but let’s allow it. Does that justify the government taking money from the rest of us, and giving it to these former manufacturing workers, in compensation? Or worse, giving it to the shareholders of the corporations who employ them—since that is what Goar and other leftists actually propose?

I’d say just the reverse—because this necessarily means, if Goar is right about everything else, that she is demanding that people actually flipping burgers at McDonald’s—the great mass of us—despite their pitiable situation, have their money taken away from them and given to others who are much better off, corporate investors and possibly their employees, to protect the latter’s privileged position.

How can this be morally justified? How, indeed, does Goar and the left justify protecting or subsidizing manufacturing in rich Canada by any means, since it necessarily means taking money and jobs away from the poor in other countries—people necessarily poorer and needier than any Canadian?

As Alice might have said, curiouser and curiouser. The modern left seems built on one premise: that by calling anything “left-wing” or “progressive” or “liberal,” you can get away with it, no matter how reactionary, selfish, racist, and classist it is.