Foreign Investment, Technology and Economic Growth

Randall White, a political scientist, is also a Toronto-based economic
consultant and author of Voice of Region: On the Long Journey to Senate
Reform in Canada.

Investment from outside its own borders has played an important and
controversial role in Canada’s economic development for a very long
time. Recent trends in the world economy, however, are creating a need
for fresh approaches to public debate on the subject. This book does not
provide such things in any fully developed form. But it brings together
assorted materials that could prove useful to anyone aspiring to tackle
the larger task.

The main contents are 11 academic papers originally presented at a
conference held in Ottawa in September 1990. The conference was
organized by Investment Canada (the Mulroney regime’s restructured
version of the old Foreign Investment Review Agency) in response to “a
number of high-profile foreign takeovers of Canadian high-technology
firms.” There is also a very short preface signed by Michael Wilson, a
short introduction by the editor, and a longer concluding section by the
economist Richard Lipsey.

The papers are a mixed lot. Some are largely theoretical, and full of
technical jargon. Others are primarily descriptive, and more accessible
to general readers. All but one are at least indirectly focused on
foreign investment in Canada. (The exception is an interesting look at
Japanese investment in California’s Silicon Valley.) The authors are
from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden. The mood
is quite academic, but a number of the papers present informative
perspectives on the real world. Some theorists suggest a few helpful
concepts.

As Lipsey notes in his end-piece, virtually all the authors “agree
with Investment Canada’s main philosophy that foreign investment is
good for the country.” Within this broad framework, there is
nonetheless considerable disagreement over particular policies and
strategies. Lipsey also notes that, as Robert Reich has somewhat
whimsically put it, in discussions about the nation-state and the world
economy today there is much potential for confusion over “Who Is
Us?” This is an especially poignant question in Canada right now.
Those seeking bold attempts to answer it will not find them in this
book.