Canada's Resource Curse: Too Much of a Good Thing

*Professor, Department of Political Science and Associate Director of the Robarts Center for Canadian Studies, York University, drache@yorku.ca. Abstract Canada has been both blessed and cursed by its vast resource wealth. Immense resource riches send the wrong message to the political class that thinking and planning for tomorrow is unnecessary when record high global prices drive economic development at a frenetic pace. Short–termism, the loss of manufacturing competitiveness ('the Dutch disease') and long term rent–seeking behavior from the corporate sector become, by default, the low policy standard. This article contends that Canada is not a simple offshoot of Anglo–American, hyper–commercial capitalism, but is subject to the recurring dynamics of social Canada and for this reason the Northern market model of capitalism needs its own theoretical articulation. Its distinguishing characteristic is that there is a large and growing role for mixed goods and non–negotiable goods in com

*Professor, Department of Political Science and Associate Director of the Robarts Center for Canadian Studies, York University, drache@yorku.ca. Abstract Canada has been both blessed and cursed by its vast resource wealth. Immense resource riches send the wrong message to the political class that thinking and planning for tomorrow is unnecessary when record high global prices drive economic development at a frenetic pace. Short–termism, the loss of manufacturing competitiveness ('the Dutch disease') and long term rent–seeking behavior from the corporate sector become, by default, the low polic