If there is a unifying element to Canada, it is a desire not to be American. Sometimes, this leads us down some pretty juvenile pathways; for instance, the impossibility of having serious discussions about health care because anyone against the clearly inadequate status quo simply must be in favour of “American-style private care.” But sometimes, like right now, this unity is a pretty handy political asset.
A maniac is in possession of our southern border. He wants something from us. It’s not trade concessions; he does not care about softwood lumber or supply management or anything like that. It’s probably not territory (taking territory is one thing, holding it is another). No, it’s more like craven obedience. There is no appeasing this man: the only choice is to resist. Understanding this is key to understanding what our country’s new strategic options are.
Despite our country being a product of 18th and 19th century anti-Americanism, the latter half of the 20th century has been a story of ever-increasing integration in terms of trade and security. This worked for us: we rode for free in so many ways it’s hard to count. We got to be prosperous and safe without actually putting the effort in, which was basically heaven for a fleece-loving country like ours. But that’s over now. Really over. There’s no point hoping for a reversal of American policy in two or four or however many years. The lesson of Trump’s re-election is that even if the American electorate runs this current set of know-nothing bastards out of office, there is every chance they might vote another set in again very soon. The Rubicon has been crossed.
That means that as a country, we need a Plan B. That Plan B is going to be about creating a Canada with a reduced dependence on America: economically, diplomatically, and in terms of security. And that plan is going to come with threats and opportunities for postsecondary education.
(Slight tangent: it is amazing how quickly politics can change. The Conservatives have spent three years and tens of millions of dollars to make the next election about Trudeau and the carbon tax; now, all of a sudden, the ballot question is tariffs and national security. If the Liberals hadn’t spent the last three years setting fire to every vestige of their credibility or had any candidates for leadership that weren’t terminally flawed, they might have a chance of winning this election: as it is, they are still probably done, but it’s not going to be a Conservative walk-over either. Politics just got interesting again.)
A changed security regime has one big minus for higher education: it’s going to cost a lot of money. Money that can’t be spent on other federal priorities, which include research funding. But there will still be opportunities for universities and colleges. Armed forces need research and development. Armed forces need officer training and in the current situation, and in the current context, entire new sets of doctrines with respect to security. And while in most countries much of both of these tasks get done by the armed forces themselves, decades of underinvestment means internal capacity is limited. A smart higher education sector would be preparing NOW to work out how to partner and respond; few institutions at least might find this to be a rewarding line of work.
The diplomatic side is maybe more interesting while at the same time being more complicated. It seems very unlikely (to me at least) that NATO still exists for all practical purposes more than another few months. Liberal democracies from around the world are going to need to find new ways to co-operate that do not depend on the participation of the United States. That doesn’t mean we need to exclude the US—I mean, for the moment it still seems like there are areas where liberal democracies and a Trumpian America have similar interests (over containing China, for instance). It’s more of an “exclude America where necessary but not necessarily exclude America” kind of situation. But it’s going to mean forging a whole new set of multilateral relationships, and again, if we’re in a hurry, the existing corps of professionals in Ottawa isn’t going to be able to do it on their own. Canadian universities in particular might have a role to play in thinking this through and getting it done—mainly through loans of staff to the public service as they did in WWII.
(There is also probably some soft-power stuff to be done around academic exchange and science partnership, but I would think that in the short term the odds that the feds are going to get back into funding international mobility because of Trump are pretty low.)
But the biggest challenge Canada is going to face is with respect to the re-orientation of trade. This is going to be tough because, to put it bluntly, we are bad at selling stuff abroad. The book is fifteen years old now, but Andrea Mandel-Campbell’s Why Mexicans Don’t Drink Molson is still pretty relevant. It’s not just that we’re lazy and prefer selling next door, where it’s easy because we don’t need to worry (much) about things like language or logistics: when attempting to operate in other countries, our businesses are timid and more to the point rarely send their best teams. That has to change. I’d argue that it means a wholesale re-vamp of what our universities teach in business schools (who, let’s face it, are long overdue for some soul-searching about how their grads have left the country with such an anemic business sector).
But more than that, there is a big whack of industrial policy coming. It’s hard to see a way around it. We can’t start to undo 75 years of trade patterns without laying some big bets on some particular economic fields, in part through greater R&D expenditures. Which fields will benefit from this kind of investment? Hard to say, but it seems likely there will be a role for universities and colleges to play here provided they can get their act together to get to work quickly and not be stupid about issues like intellectual property (it is an unfortunate but well-known fact that the quickest way to kill any higher education-industry partnership is to utter the words “we’ll just give it a quick run by legal”).
It would of course be nice if we could run the clock back to 2017. Back then, we talked bravely about how Canada might benefit from Trump, what with all the people clamoring to get out because of racism, interference in science, etc. There was, in short, an upside to chaos south of the border. But none of that is going to happen this time. The combination of an underpowered economy, overheated housing markets, and a general disinterest in funding science and education mean that there is little public license to seek a rise in immigration even for the most highly skilled. This is the price we pay for our generalized political complacency: when lemons strike, we can’t make lemonade.
That said, there should be opportunities, mainly research-based, in the maelstrom of change to come. The question is: which universities will be nimble enough to take advantage of them?
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