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Pettigrew Sees A Positive Future For Canada

Thanks to its management of the economy and the solid condition of its financial institutions, Canada is in the best situation to survive and emerge from the current global financial crisis, said former federal Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew during the Tuesday morning plenary session of EXFOR & Annual Meeting 2009 at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal.

“As Canadians, we’ve always had this kind of inferiority complex…that when the U. S catches a cold, Canada gets pneumonia,” said Pettigrew, who is now executive advisor, international, at Deloitte & Touche LLP. He added, however, that compared to the United States, our economy has been more resilient, and that recessions in the past have tended to affect Canada’s southern neighbour more deeply.

“It’s when America has pneumonia, we have a cold,” Pettigrew said.

Canada is based on the notion of peace, order, and good government, Pettigrew said, compared with the American ideal of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thanks to our public finance, relatively low debt, balancing of trade, and good social support systems, Pettigrew said Canada is in a very solid position to weather the financial crisis. The country’s commodities, he added, will also play an important role.

“Watch us in 2010, and you’ll see, we’ll carry a lot,” he forecast.

On a global level, Pettigrew said that while the United States will continue to represent “a huge power”, emerging markets, including China and India, will play a significant role in the future. However, he feels the world’s economic powerhouses need to start treating these emerging markets differently, integrating them into the world’s institutions.