What the wonks are saying: Digital woes and Trump policy 2.0
Welcome to our weekly roundup of the smart policy thinking and discussion from other think tanks and academics in Canada and beyond. In this edition we look at a new report on Canada’s ailing digital infrastructure, a discussion on Canada-Asia relations and a Trump-Vance cheat sheet:
Michael R. King, associate professor and Lansdowne Chair in Finance at the Peter B. Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria, writes a piece for the Centre for International Governance Innovation, arguing that Canada’s digital infrastructure needs critical upgrades in open banking, real-time payments and digital identity. “Together they form the backbone of a digital infrastructure that will allow Canadians to maximize the benefits of AI-driven innovation. Without these upgrades, Canada risks falling further behind,” King says. “Policy makers have known this for more than a decade.”
In a webinar hosted by Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President Research & Strategy, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, AFP Fellows Deanna Horton, Stephen Nagy and Yves Tiberghien discussed how Trump’s reelection will impact Canada-Asia relations. The verdict: While tariffs dominate the headlines, also worrying: “[Senator Marco Rubio] has advocated for including Taiwan in international organizations, he has directly attacked the Chinese communist party. I think in some cases he has advocated for Taiwan as an independent, sovereign state,” Stephen Nagy said. “If this is the direction that the Trump administration goes, this is alarming to an extreme extent for all the countries within the region who just cannot deviate from their one-China policy.” Tune in here.
David Mulroney, a former Canadian ambassador to China and a member of the advisory council at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, argues in The Hub that Canada’s foreign policy needs “a radical reset.” He writes: “For much of its modern history, Canadian foreign policy simply involved navigating in the broad and generous wake of the United States… But in the 21st century this has become harder to do. That’s because the U.S. has itself found global navigation more difficult. As a result, it has come to expect more from its allies, Canada included. ‘Diplomatic free riding,’ a bad habit we’ve adopted over the last decades, now comes at a cost.” Canada needs to get serious about national defence, and do it quickly, writes Mulroney.
The Council on Foreign Relations offers a handy summary of what we know so far about Donald Trump and JD Vance’s positions on key issues. A cheat sheet on the President-elect’s position on defence, for instance: “Trump says he will reassess the United States’ role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a transatlantic defense alliance founded to counter the threat of a Soviet invasion during the Cold War, and would consider significantly reducing Washington’s involvement with the bloc. He harshly criticized NATO while in office, reportedly telling top European officials in 2020 that “NATO is dead,” and repeatedly threatened to abandon the alliance.”
In The Conversation, UQAM professor Mark Purdon argues that Canada needs to take its contribution to discussions on international carbon markets seriously: “As the world warms, there is an urgent need to discuss how Canada can engage with growing international carbon markets. More than simply a way to bring down the costs of climate change mitigation for Canadians, they are a form of international co-operation,” writes Purdon.
Craig Damian Smith of Pairity, a refugee resettlement organization, and Abdulla Daoud of the Montreal-based non-profit Refugee Centre write in The Globe and Mail that, with the incoming Trump administration potentially spurring more asylum migration, Canada needs a shift in the way it handles refugees. “People seeking safety will arrive regardless of attempts to keep them away. A more effective, humane and fiscally responsible solution will include redistribution with a focus on public gains.”