i'm encouraged by what i'm hearing about a government-directed response to the manufacturing crisis around medical supplies here in canada. if done well, this could kickstart a substantive manufacturing recovery in the region.

this region has historically been the canadian component of the great lakes automotive manufacturing economy, going back to the auto pact signed by lestern pearson in the 60s, but this has been slowly evaporating since the first nafta was signed, a process that appears to have only been accelerated by the new nafta. this has left the region with a substantive manufacturing excess that nobody has really seemed eager to move on.

in the vacuum created by the decline of the automotive industry, the broader medical industry, including a substantive biomed sector, has moved into southwestern ontario, especially the areas around the university in waterloo. there is a great deal of continuity in retooling these factories for the production of medical equipment, as most of the actual industry in the region, at this point, is, in fact, medical.

we can have silly ideological debates about the role of government, but the reality is that the only way to get an industry up and running in whatever this really existing capitalism actually is is to set up a crown corporation and spin it off.

canada is a large purchaser of medical supplies, so even a shift to domestic production could have dramatic multiplier effects.

let's hope that this government, and successive governments, hold their ground on this, in the face of whatever eventual wto challenges are no doubt coming.