Understanding Canada: Building on the New Canadian Political Economy

Randall White is the author of Voice of Region: On the Long Journey to
Senate Reform in Canada and Global Spin: Probing the Globalization
Debate, and the co-author of Toronto Women.

One among the various late–20th-century heirs of the “old”
Canadian political economy of the 1930s and 1940s—pioneered by the
likes of Harold Innis and W.A. Mackintosh—is what political scientist
Reg Whitaker once referred to as “the new political economy, with its
left-nationalist perspective.” This volume of 16 essays by 25
contributors is essentially a report card on this new political economy.

Jane Jenson, Paul Phillips, Mel Watkins, and Glen Williams are among
the book’s contributors. Topics addressed include “The Political
Economy of Race, Ethnicity, and Migration,” “Remapping Canada: The
State in the Era of Globalization,” “The New Political Economy of
Regions,” and “Displacing the Welfare State.”

The volume’s overall conclusion is that the new political economy has
been carrying on, while at the same time making its peace with newer
trends and fashions. The current mood is still “left,” but not as
“nationalist” as it used to be. Even Mel Watkins now believes that
“there are fates much worse” than the “embarrassments” of
economic structure that continue to thwart Canadian national
aspirations.

In the end, the reasons for carrying on are clear enough. It is also
clear, alas, that the new Canadian political economy has yet to evince
the forceful critical realism and passionate conviction about Canada and
its future that so distinguished the best work of those who espoused the
original tradition in the 1930s and 1940s.