Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Ideologies of Growth: Talking Up the Rim
The economic interactions described by these Pacific Rim trade and travel
indicators did not just happen in some foreordained manner, for the obsta-
cles and inertia challenging a Pacific initiative were substantial. Canada's
economic linkages and social and cultural traditions in the 1960s pointed
east to Europe and south to the United States. At that time immigration
originated overwhelmingly in Europe and particularly in Britain; indeed, it
was only in 1982 that Canada's constitution was patriated from Westminster.
Asia was far away geographically, politically and culturally; during the Cold
War much of the continent was under Communist rule or threat, while the
rest was semi-developed or underdeveloped with few functioning democra-
cies. Relatively little English was spoken and religious traditions were unfa-
miliar to North Americans. Significant linkages, let alone the creation of a
transnational social field, seemed implausible.
But economic opportunities were compelling for public- and private-
sector elites in Canada, notably in British Columbia. The meteoric devel-
opment of Japan and the four tigers created huge trading opportunities to
a nation where there was a growing discourse of decline in terms of eco-
nomic performance (Figure 2.6). Data amassed by the federal government
revealed an alarming failure of economic indicators from the 1960s
onwards (Government of Canada 1996). Productivity gains had collapsed
with the end of the post-war boom, real growth had halved and even turned
slightly negative from 1989-95, while unemployment bounded from five
percent in the 1960s to seven percent in 1973-79 and then to an average
of over nine percent for the next 15 years. To maintain welfare state expen-
ditures, taxation steadily rose to unsustainable levels (Figure 2.6). With
such disturbing economic trends the Pacific Rim promised a veritable El
Dorado. Business networks were assembled: the Canadian Chamber of
Commerce in Hong Kong in 1977, with 700 members the largest Chamber
outside Canada, the Canada-China Business Council (1978), the Asia
Pacific Foundation of Canada based in Vancouver (1984), and the Hong
Kong-Canada Business Association (1984) with over 3,000 members in
10 cities across Canada. At the political and diplomatic level their work
was raised to a new level by the inaugural meeting of the Asia-Pacific
Economic Co-operation network (APEC) in Canberra in 1989, sired by
an Australian government aware of the radical economic transformation in
its own backyard.
Following the Trudeau visit to China in 1973, a series of federal, provincial
and even municipal trade missions plied the air routes across the Pacific. In
1985, shortly after sister city visits to Yokohama (Japan) and Guangzhou in
South China, Michael Harcourt, by now Mayor of Vancouver, led an 'Economic
