Hey…Federal Government of Canada …Listen Up!....

Hey…Federal Government of Canada …Listen up!....

This is your manufacturing sectors talking.

Is it possible you can listen to us for just a little bit?

We want to help you with your new year resolution.

We heard you are interested in reversing the ongoing decline in national productivity and prosperity, so its probably about time to listen to all of us in the manufacturing sector.

Here is what we suggest you resolve to do next year……

Get yourself educated on the current status of manufacturing and better understand the policy and plans we need to collectively undertake to Take Back Manufacturing.

You must understand our frustration…

With almost zero help from many past government administrations, we have managed to just stay alive through the ravages of globalization. Due to the offshoring of our capacity we have seen a decline in actual manufacturing value by up to 30% in the last 30 years, with most of the reduction taking place between 2000 to 2008, with 500,000 jobs displaced, and almost 50% of our small and medium enterprises forced to close if they could not join the offshore supply chains. This has increased our trade imbalance by 10 fold.

The local manufacturing sectors that remain are in limbo with under capitalization and zero opportunity for self sustaining growth.

Its clear to most Canadian citizens that the free trade orientated global supply chains that we have been forced to use for the last 30 years are just not working for our prosperity. Let us be clear, the economists sold you a myth that global free trade was a win for all… Since 1980 global trade has increased eight times, but global prosperity has struggled to get above 3 times, and certainly the mature western nations have been victims of significant wealth transfer to those emerging economies.

We have suffered along with our siblings in the Petro-chemical sector with a total lack of federal government attention and commitment, even though we can be far more important to prosperity than the service sector that has tried but failed to offset our dwindling contribution.

We have struggled with the lack of appropriate funding on education and training to the point that we now have a skill shortage. This has placed our skilled manufacturing population in decline with no plan to re-life the baby boomer exit. So, its amazing you seem surprised that we lack skill sustainability with constant skill shortages even at existing capacity levels, never mind any upturns that may come along.

We need some discussion on changing the culture of our educational system from a focus on selling ?education and knowledge to the highest global buyer, and more toward a citizen centric Integrated Industrial Learning System that serves all age ranges of our population, so we can re-life our workforce. This must include a better focus on basic literacy and a STEM syllabus across all levels of education, as its clear that the current over socio-liberalised education agenda is failing our citizens, with significant youth under-employment, and the erosion of even the basic skills in the general population to become a modern industrial workforce.

In the same timeframe we have seen the growth in the public sector, both in size and spending on activities that have failed to perform for our citizens. All it has done is added layer upon layer of bureaucracy with red tape style regulations, standards and taxes that has stymied our ability to run our businesses effectively to compete within our local trade jurisdictions, never mind those offshore. ?Further, it has generated a high level of extreme non-value-adding employment such that we end up competing within our own economy for manpower at the expense of the tax payer.

Your solution to solve this mis-matched workforce shortage is to increase the level of productivity numbing untrained immigration. This just shows how out of touch you all are with the reality we face. All this added immigration has done is further stressed our housing, health, and education infrastructure.

Another thing… our governments at all levels spend sixty times more on social and culture projects than technology and industrial projects…. Its about time we focused on what “pays the rent” and stop worrying about “who we are” and more about “how we are all doing”!

We will need much more national investment in our local industries to recover our manufacturing so we can operate with far shorter and local supply chains. The offshore supply chains are fast becoming nonviable due to far higher inventory costs due to far higher interest rates, not to mention our dangerous trade dependency for essential products and commodities from foreign actors that may not have our best interests in mind.

Industry is going to need your help in rebuilding the infrastructure and evolving to the INDUSTRY 4.0 technologies to ensure we have a productive restart of our manufacturing communities.

Its very important we take a fresh look at our commitments and plans for climate change mitigation, as its clear we need to be much more realistic. We need much more open discussions, and a much more democratic approach to climate management policy setting, as much dissention exists in the scientific ranks with “the sciences is settled” rhetoric, as its just not stacking up as a common-sense approach for the future of our prosperity.

In parallel with the climate discussions, we need to talk about our future energy needs as its clear we will need far more as we electrify our economy. Its clear that we cannot run an Industrial society on wind and solar. So, we need to accelerate and increase the plans for a Nuclear centred energy solution, and we can also use the electrical energy abundance of nuclear to use electrolysis to produce green hydrogen for propulsion.

We see our cousins south of the border making some plans to reshore their own manufacturing sectors within the USMCA…. We badly need to join the party. Don’t worry about the other international trade agreements, they are unhelpful based on how globalization is headed, and the USMCA is where we need to focus our trade efforts. We need to ensure we work closely, and in far better harmony with these key trade partners south of the border. We need to participate in making the USMCA a true trade bloc that better controls imports and generates an opportunity for all of us to share trade and prosperity.

So, you need to be our leadership and focus on these issues, and get all forms of government, our industrial sectors, our educational institutions, and our financial sectors to work as a coalition to make all this happen.

So, lets think very hard about all this as we move into the festive season, and ensure we plan forward to minimise the pain to our citizens on what looks like being both a difficult yet exciting year in 2023.

More at www.nigelsouthwayauthor.com