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Jim Balsille knows a thing or two about building a successful business and making money. As CO-CEO of Research in Motion, the company that brought us the Blackberry and got us all typing with our thumbs, Balsille did a lot for Canadian business and Canadian tech.
He’s also spent a significant amount of money as a philanthropist spending millions of his own money to establish the Centre for International Governance Innovation the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo.
So, when someone like Balsille speaks up, it’s always worth listening to and considering what he has to say.
“As economic strategies go, Liberal Leader Mark Carney is the ultimate confidence man. He wants to tax what Canada exports and subsidize what we import. Judging by the poll numbers, many Canadians are somehow persuaded this will lead us to prosperity,” is how Balsille opens a just published op-ed in The Globe and Mail.
Those are strong words, but if you read the whole thing, you will see that he backs up his reasoning for explaining why he thinks Mark Carney’s economic ideas are the wrong ones for Canada.
Balisille goes on at length about intellectual property being key to the modern economy, a fact he says Carney seems to ignore. He talks about the need to add value to the products we produce - refining our own aluminum or oil - rather than simply shipping them to the United States or elsewhere and allowing them to take the high paying jobs.
“Canada doesn’t just need to diversify markets – it desperately needs to diversify our products. A political leader who isn’t aware of these shifts isn’t going to design and implement strategies that transform our industries from producers of low-value, raw materials into producers of higher-margin products and services,” Balsille writes.
Too many people are willing to assume Mark Carney knows what he’s talking about because he’s an economist, he has a PhD from Oxford and was Governor of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada. It’s an impressive resume to be sure but it doesn’t mean that he has good ideas or policies.
Few Canadians would say that Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada is sound economic policy, but the people driving that, like Carney are economists. Peter Navarro has a PhD in economics from Harvard and taught at the University of California for years. Kevin Hassett has his PhD in economics and taught for years at the Columbia Business School.
Being smart, having impressive credentials doesn’t insulate you from having and espousing bad ideas.
I’ve looked at Carney’s economic ideas and I’ve come to the same conclusion as someone who knows how the business world works because he conquered it. Balasille is on the money when it comes to Mark Carney.
