The WW2 level mobilization idea seems on point to me, but most Canadians I know seem totally oblivious to the fundamental decline of our economic and infrastructural capacities. I think we’ve lived too long in easy mode, benefitted a lot in many ways from our neighbour to the south, and let things slide too much for a generation or two.
I hesitate to say that in a sense because frankly, I don’t fully understand it. I do however understand that we’re languishing in many ways, and we don’t appear prepared to address this in a meaningful way.
It feels a bit like watching someone play a real time strategy game and noticing things are easy for them because external elements are removing difficulty from the game, so they focus their resources on a lot of the wrong stuff. Then when hard times come, they’re brutally unprepared and get wrecked while they try to ramp up to deal with whatever came for them. It feels like Canada is at the stage where the first taste of bad stuff has arrived, and we’re still fumbling with deciding what/if/how to address this bad thing. And we’d really like to continue playing the game as we were up until that point.
Maybe a terrible analogy. I’m the epitome of a layperson. All of this is opinion that should be taken with teaspoons of salt.
This is my own opinion too: I feel that as Canadians we are generally coasting on our past accomplishments/echoes of past economic activity. This blinds is to upcoming challenges and existing problems.
For example: we're ignoring the fact that our economy is heavily skewed towards "fake productive" activities like selling the same house back-and-forth to each other, and the Finance industry (an accountant friend tells me that even in Oil & Gas a lot of the "growth" happens through trading unproductive land stakes). The other heavyweight driver of activity is Government, but that can't be sustained if you're not generating value through other industries...
I also think that Canadians have a complacent attitude to daily corruption ("it couldn't happen here - that only happens in those funny tropical countries!"). This means that corruption flourishes just under the surface in many places.
I hesitate to say that in a sense because frankly, I don’t fully understand it. I do however understand that we’re languishing in many ways, and we don’t appear prepared to address this in a meaningful way.
It feels a bit like watching someone play a real time strategy game and noticing things are easy for them because external elements are removing difficulty from the game, so they focus their resources on a lot of the wrong stuff. Then when hard times come, they’re brutally unprepared and get wrecked while they try to ramp up to deal with whatever came for them. It feels like Canada is at the stage where the first taste of bad stuff has arrived, and we’re still fumbling with deciding what/if/how to address this bad thing. And we’d really like to continue playing the game as we were up until that point.
Maybe a terrible analogy. I’m the epitome of a layperson. All of this is opinion that should be taken with teaspoons of salt.