Jim Balsillie: Canada's Problem Isn't Trump

For as long as I can remember, Canadians have generally felt two things about America. And they're deeply in tension with one another.

On the one hand, we consume American media, mimic American politics, are protected by American power, and trade almost exclusively with the biggest market in the world. And yet we also define ourselves largely in opposition to them. In its most superficial form, this can look like cheap anti-Americanism. But, at various moments in our history, US dominance has forced Canada to think seriously about the things that set us apart: universal health care, our social safety net, our public broadcaster. America is like our older sibling — we look up to them, while at the same time defining ourselves by the things that make us different.

This is what makes Trump's second term so jarring for Canada. The US is now both a threat to our economy and to the future of our sovereignty. But that also means that Canadians are now, once again, asking what we want our country to be. And whether our reliance on the US is still serving us.

While most of us are only just waking up to this, Jim Balsillie has been thinking about it for 30 years.

Balsillie is the former co-CEO of Research in Motion — the company that developed the BlackBerry. But Jim isn't just one of the most successful business people in Canada — he's also one of the most patriotic. Which makes his recent criticism of our country that much more meaningful.

As Jim has pointed out, our GDP per capita is currently about 70% of what it is in the US. Our productivity growth has been abysmal for years, and our high cost of living means that 1 in 4 Canadians now use a food bank.

But according to Jim none of this — our precarious economic position — can be blamed on Trump. He thinks that over the last thirty years we've clung to an outdated economic model, and have allowed our politics to be captured by corporate interests.

So, with less than a week to go before the federal election, and for our final episode of Season One of Machines Like Us for The Globe and Mail, I thought it was the perfect time to sit down with Jim and ask him how we might build a stronger, and more sovereign Canada.