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Canada and Globalization

Notes for an address by Hon. David Kilgour, Member of Parliament for Edmonton Southeast and Secretary of State (Latin America and Africa)
At the 9th European Seminar for Graduate Students in Canadian Studies
Brno, Moravia, Czech Republic, October 16, 2000

As a Canadian, it is very encouraging to meet students such as yourselves from across Europe who have devoted some of your education to studying our country. As Canadianists, you know, perhaps better than some Canadians, what the Canadian experience and Canada’s values mean to the world in general and your own countries in particular. We take pride in our reputation as a good friend to many nations, a respecter of diversity, a peacekeeper/peacemaker, and a people devoted to respecting human rights everywhere.

I’m sure you are aware of Forum 2000, which is currently taking place in Prague. This year’s theme is "Education, Culture and Spiritual Values in the Age of Globalization". For three days, leading world figures, politicians, academics, artists and writers, among others, are discussing the challenges posed by globalization. It’s interesting to note the difference between the attitude towards the forum and the recent IMF/World Bank meetings also held in Prague which drew an estimated ten thousand anti-globalization protestors.

Globalization is a hotly debated subject. It’s something I’m reasonably confident that many of your own fellow nationals, like many Canadians, fear. Many say it brings the decay of social values, cultures, the environment and even democracy itself. Two days ago at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, for example, only a handful of approximately 100 students, to whom I was speaking about Canada’s human security-based foreign policy, indicated that they thought globalization is a good thing (In fairness, most abstained from expressing an opinion and a few indicated support). I’d argue that the main challenge to globalization is not to decide whether globalization is good or bad, but rather to ensure that a ‘walled-down’ world provides more fulfilled lives for people everywhere. Globalization can be an agent for good, a force to create unprecedented growth and opportunity for those who embrace it.

Benefits of Globalization

Economists have talked about globalization for decades even if the term itself emerged only recently. Many speak of a borderless world, but that is far from today’s reality where boundaries are very real. Too often the term is thought of as synonymous with unbridled capitalism where any entrepreneur can raise money anywhere in the world, make anything and sell it anywhere. But globalization is more importantly also about the free flow of ideas, the exchange of culture and values, the greater attention now being given to issues such as human rights, environmental protection and technological advances which have brought people closer together than ever before.

Virtually all economists have concluded that the large majority of residents of our shrunken planet are considerably better off through the growth of markets and the efforts of the GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade] and its successor, the WTO [World Trade Organization], to keep markets open.

With ever expanding technology come expanded markets and increased demand for products, but also greater competition. There are now more people with computers connected to the world who are investing their hard-earned dollars as never before. As Klaus Schwab of the Davos World Economic Forum observed, "We have moved from a world where the big eat the small, to a world where the fast eat the slow." More than $1.5 trillion is now exchanged in the world's currency markets each day, and nearly a fifth of the goods and services produced each year are traded.

Developing World

Many are concerned about the impact globalization is having on developing countries. Noting that the income gap between the worlds’ people living in the richest countries and those living in the poorest countries is rising, there is the perception that globalization benefits only the rich, leaving the poor behind.

Yet how many of you know that Angola, Uganda and Botswana already stand among the ten fastest growing economies globally? The IMF forecasts that Africa’s overall GDP should grow by 5% in 2000, a significant improvement from 3.1% in 1999.

Much of what separates the developed and developing worlds today is the information technology gap. A key reason for the success of the Czech Republic in the new economy is related to the fact that this country’s 13 and 14 year-olds have achieved the best mathematics test results in Europe, according to a report by the European Commission. Is it any wonder that Brno is becoming a high tech centre when there are currently 500 students enrolled in the Faculty of Informatics at Masaryk University, while as recently as six years ago there were only 40.

Grâce à la diffusion des idées sur l'environnement, la démocratie, les droits de la personne et, même, la création de richesses par l'intermédiaire de l'autoroute de l'information, de la télévision ou des satellites, davantage de personnes peuvent être amenées à la table de négociation. D'après moi, un des meilleurs effets de la mondialisation est la technologie de l'information, qui a mis l'accent sur le besoin d'étendre la démocratie et de protéger les droits de la personne dans le monde entier. Les télédiffuseurs, comme la BBC World Service, TV-5 et CNN, sont les principaux véhicules de la communication instantanée, qui a révolutionné notre compréhension du monde. Par contre, l'exportation croissante des films, de la musique et des programmes télévisés américains préoccupe de nombreuses personnes

The Future

I would argue that the alternative to managed globalization could be very painful indeed if we recall what happened to the pre-1914 short-lived victory of free markets and liberal democracy over mercantilism and nationalism.

If Fred Bergsten of the Institute for International Economics is correct that on trade matters you either move forward or fall over- the bicycle theory – there is real work to be done by all of us. It is clear that globalization is a force of great change and not simply a spectre on the horizon.

Grâce à la technologie, aux moyens de communications et à l'économie, la mondialisation et l'intensification de nos rapports sont inévitables. Le temps et les distances diminuent : la mondialisation reflète cette réalité. C'est pourquoi je m'interroge au sujet des personnes qui condamnent entièrement la mondialisation. Les pays ne peuvent réussir en demeurant isolés. Un pays pauvre qui ferme ses frontières à l'investissement restera probablement pauvre. Tout en étant une menace pour le système même qui la soutient, la mondialisation peut en même temps se faire le champion de la stabilité, de la démocratie et d'un partage accru dans le monde.

Action Needed

Here are four areas in which Bergsten thinks you and I should be active in our own countries:

  • Public education above all, which will require better analyses of the real consequences of globalization, including all of its benefits.
  • An honest admission that there are costs and losers with globalization, together with creating better safety nets and education/training programs in many countries for those dislocated by globalization or related factors,
  • Reviewing efforts to reform the international financial institutions to help prevent crises, including approving capital controls in certain cases, more effective early warning systems, better coordination of exchange rates among the big economies, and engaging the private sector more systematically in rescue operations, and
  • Restarting the truly multilateral liberalization of the global trading system, which should address the key issues of the critics, including food trade, labour agreements and the environment.

Canada, Europe and the rest of the world are evolving quickly in facing the new and complex challenges of globalization. I am more than ever convinced that policies in every land will be effective only to the degree they are founded on common bedrock values of democracy, maximum education for all, the rule of law and independent judiciaries, free market economies, respect and cooperation for peace and security. If history has taught us anything, it is that we ignore these values at our peril.

As post-graduate scholars many of you will fairly soon be in positions to influence nationals in your own countries. I wish you every success.

Thank you.

 
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