The Department of Government Efficiency, (DOGE) led by Elon the DOGE (Dangerous Oligarch Gutting Everything), is driven in part by the libertarian belief that there is no genuine public interest or public good, partly by capitalists’ interests in freeing business activity from any sort of oversight and regulation in the public interest, and partly by Trump and the MAGA movement’s antediluvian, anti-science worldview. Cuts to USAID that affect antiAIDS programs in South Africa, the threat to withdraw from the World Health Organization, forcing the CDC to cut back on global monitoring of disease threats, impeding the ability of American government scientists to freely communicate with other scientists around the world– arguably the most important intellectual condition for the advancement of human scientific knowledge– firing hundreds of climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), forbidding the public use of references to ‘climate change” in official government documents, and putting kooks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and — even worse, former Professional Wrestling impressario Linda McMahon– in charge of the Departments of Health and Education respectively–can only be understood as attempts to construct a fantasy-reality in deep conflict with the material reality whose basic elements and forces and their connection to human life natural science studies. Since material reality never loses a conflict with human wishful thinking, I believe that the rest of the world should let the Trumpites try to return to the 18th century of mercantile economics, a world before the germ theory of disease, vaccinations, public health and education, knowledge of the mathematics of probability and the power of computer modelling. Let them have their red hats and delusions: we in the rest of the world should throw open our doors to American scientists and progressives and drain the MAGA swamp of people who do not want to be swamped by Category Five hurricanes or roasted in out of control wildfires.

I am not being facetious. Canada has to be proactive in transforming its economy in the face of American tariffs and one crucial place to start is with a massive investment in our universities. Canadian universities have been underfunded for decades (especially in Ontario). The unprecedented assault on scientific research currently underway in the United States is an opportunity to poach some of the best talent from American universities and create new synergies with on-going research in Canada. And not only in the natural sciences: technological development is going to cut into manufacturing employment over the medium to long term, Trump tariffs or not. The world is going to need artists and writers and commentators and critics and policy analysts: all contributions that the arts, social sciences, and humanities can make to the future. Culturally and geographically a move to Canada is far easier for American academics than a move to Europe. Crisis is a moment of opportunity: Canadian workers must absolutely be protected against job losses, but we also have to seize the moment and turn our economy in a different direction– not only away from integration with the American, but towards the future. A generational investment in our universities to attract top American talent is one key step in that direction.

There are precedents in our shared history for large scale movements of American’s north. Canada of course welcomed tens of thousands of American young people in the 60’s fleeing the risk of being sent to Viet Nam. Less well-known but perhaps more directly relevant to my proposal is the influx of American academics to fill positions as the higher education system here expanded rapidly in the 1960s to accommodate the Baby Boomers. Canadians are quick to point out to how so many of the world’s favourite American celebrities and singers are actually Canadian, but Americans who have moved here have enriched our cultural and intellectual life as well. Now is absolutely not the time to turn inward and wrap ourselves in Hudson’s Bay blankets of chauvinism; it is a time to both reach out and transform from within.

Investing in Universities alone is not going to solve the problem. Canadians are also going to have to contend with massive unemployment. If the tariffs persist, and the new tariffs promised and threatened on steel and aluminum and softwood lumber added, 1.5 million jobs could be lost, according to the Canadian Labour Congress. Trudeau and Ford and the other premiers might talk tough, but the economic facts of the matter suggest that Canada is not going to win an all out trade war with the United States. Retaliatory tariffs will bite in local regions of US economy, but overall the effect will be small, given that exports to Canada are a small fraction of overall US economy (about 1.3 % of GDP) whereas the value of Canadian exports to US (77 per cent of all Canadian exports) compromise around 25 % of Canadian GDP: an astounding level of vulnerability.

No Canadian government– no government, as a matter of fact– can simply accept an ally effectively ripping up a treaty (one demanded and signed by Donald Trump himself, in the case of the Canada-USA-Mexico trade agreement. I wonder if Trudeau pointed out to Trump that if the agreement is bad it is his fault, as it was negotiated under his watch)? That said, now is not the time for tough talk but creative transformation of the Canadian economy. Structural and qualitative transformations take time, but one short term policy that could be implemented right now is the long-debated but never implemented Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI). Versions of this policy have floated around for at least forty years but no government has implemented it in any systematic way. Now is the time! A GBI would allow for a planned reduction in average working hours per week which would, in turn, allow for the possibility of job sharing as a way of mitigating higher levels of unemployment and increasing the quality of life by making available more free time.

For example, a reduction of 25%, from a 40 to a 30 hour week, would allow more workers to be employed for less time while the GBI would make up for the wages lost in proportion to the reduced hours. If a firm employed 50 workers at 40 hrs/week that would amount to 2000 person hours of employment. If every worker worked only 30 hours a week the same firm could employ 66 workers for a total of 1980 person hours. The math is crude and the implementation would be more complicated, but the example, rough as it is, shows how jobs can be created by re-dividing labour time without expanding production.

Systematic investment in this sort of scheme could catalyze deeper social changes. The experienced value of more free time might break the cycle of addiction to ever higher levels of consumption of things whose rush wears off as soon as they have been taken out of the box. Breaking our understanding of what is enjoyable and worthwhile free from mindless concumerism would furthermore reduce the need for higher money wages (which are one dimension of inflationary spirals). Working less, demanding less, living and experiencing more we would all reduce our dependence, not just on American markets, but capitalism. In any case, something like this policy is going to be required; the Labour Congress warned that 1.5 million jobs could be lost because of the Trump tariffs, but another study warned that between 1.5 and 7.5 million Canadian jobs could be lost to automation.

We need to be clear that capitalism is the problem. Capitalism sets workers at odds with each other in a cut throat competition for scarce jobs. On one level it is lamentable to hear the United Auto Workers come out in support of Trump’s tariffs. On the other hand, what real choice do they have so long as workforces are divided along national lines while capital roams free? Free trade has damaged Canadian and American industrial bases, of that there can be no doubt. The primary functions of unions today is to protect their members’ jobs and secure job-creating investment. But the fact of the matter is that Mexican, American, Canadian, and, let’s be clear, Chinese workers all need their jobs. Remember what a worker is: someone who must sell their labour power to a capitalist because they have no other means of life. That shared material reality is the objective basis of shared interest across borders. But solidarity cannot be built overnight and the threat of mass job losses is real. While still working to build new bridges between workers across borders and against the capitalist class, immediate steps must be taken that both ward off disaster and slowly begin to transform capitalism from within in a democratic, life-valuable, cooperative and socialist direction.

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And now, I need to take a break from Trump commentary. In an older post long ago I said that I am not a journalist and I do not want the blog to chase the news. I am worried that Trump is forcing me to break my vow. He has a unique ability to attract attention to himself. He is like a magpie, shrieking with excitement about every new shiny object he sees and making everyone around him stop and look. I need my attention span back. Henceforth, until he causes a genuine catastrophe or achieves something worth philosophical reflection, I will do my best to ignore him.