There are thousands of incredible speeches in the archives of the Empire Club of Canada, and when one has the chance to sift through them from time to time it becomes clear that certain thematic favorites reoccur on a regular basis. This is particularly true around anything relating to finance and job creation. Rough calculations indicate, in fact, that there are close to 850 speeches that deal with the latter theme that have been delivered at this podium since we first opened for business in 1903. This is not, to be clear, some troubling sign of a lack of originality from the Club or its thousands of guest speakers over the decades, but rather a clear indication of the importance that Canadians and our fellow Ontarians attach to personal and corporate wealth creation, most often achieved through gainful employment.
The visit of our Finance Minister for Ontario this week comes at a time when Canadians are thinking a lot about their own workplace futures in a world economy that has become as volatile as it is unpredictable. For some, these are times of great opportunity, for others, stressful times of uncertainty as they face a new economy without always having the requisite skillsets to succeed. Many finance ministers have grappled with this reality in the past, including the man who sat in the Federal Finance Minister’s chair the year that Minister Charles Sousa was born. When the Hon. Donald M. Fleming addressed the Club on February 13th, 1958, there was a 6% premium on the Canadian dollar that was creating a very heavy handicap for exporters and the tourism industry, and while this problem was pretty much at the opposite end of the spectrum from where we find ourselves today, it was creating anxiety in many Bay Street boardrooms and led the Minister to talk about the fundamental issue of job creation. Here is a brief excerpt from that speech entitled “Dollars and Sense”, delivered almost exactly 58 years ago:
“There is much also that Government can do to assist in meeting an immediate problem of unemployment, particularly if they have sufficient warning of it. There is the opportunity for direct creation of work through construction programmes. This opportunity is open to all levels of government. The municipalities are a very fertile source of employment of this kind, and work provided at the municipal level has the advantage of providing it where it is needed, without uprooting those for whom the work is created. The provinces likewise have open to them a wide field of very useful public investment in the construction of highways, bridges and useful public works which will at the same time create a large volume of employment. The terms upon which all levels of government are able to borrow have eased greatly in the last six months. Money is more plentiful and interest rates on new borrowings are substantially lower. Parliament has approved the Government’s programme of placing at the disposal of the Provinces additional fiscal payments, this year estimated at $82 million. It is expected that this aid will soon reflect itself in works programmes of the provincial and municipal governments.”
Finance ministers think a lot about the importance of getting Canadians to work, and Minister Sousa’s speech this week will be no exception. It will become, in the historical archives of the Empire Club, a snapshot in time on how well we as Canadians and as Ontarians dealt with job creation and economic growth during a period of oil gluts, a very strong American dollar, anxiety about climate change and terrorism, and a disparity in wealth distribution which is creating a wider gulf between the haves and the have nots of our society.
