It has also been an intellectual roller-coaster ride from Francis Fukuyama's The End of History in the mid-1990s to Fareed Zakaria's
The Post-American World a decade later.
Clearly, the first decade of the new millennium will cast a long shadow over the 21st century. It was marked by jarring and unsettling events: Y2K; terrorism;
corporate debacles; horrific natural disasters showcased by the digital information age; the
invasion of Iraq and the absence of weapons of mass destruction; the dot-com bust;
and the global financial crisis. Cumulatively, these events have sapped public trust
in leadership and changed expectations for their governments. Paradoxically, they
have created gaping fissures in the body politic about how best to meet them.
And while these events naturally captured the headlines, they represent only the tip of the proverbial iceberg of the "global drivers of change" that are now
reshaping economies, societies and politics. There are four core structural trends driving this change: globalization, demographics, the information revolution and climate change. These, together with the events of the past decade, are inexorably changing
the world order.
FLATTER AND MORE WIRED
What shape will this new world order take? Let's start with globalization, which has been made possible by the information revolution. It is bound together
through global supply chains, global capital markets, the Internet and unprecedented movements
of people. We now inhabit a flatter, more interconnected, more wired, more competitive
world than was imaginable just a decade ago.
Without this pervasive globalization, the global financial crisis would have been
a U.S. banking crisis. Without this globalization, the United States would not have
been able to live beyond its means at no apparent cost for the past decade, nor would
China have been able to export its way to two decades of double-digit growth.
Without this globalization, supply chains would still be national rather than worldwide, and costs would be higher. The global restructuring this has facilitated will see Asia account for 50 per cent of world GDP by the end of this decade, an economic prominence last seen three centuries ago. Indicative of the pace of change is that China became the second-largest economy in the world in 2010, moving another Asian
economy, Japan, into third place.
At the same time, the information revolution is reshaping how we work, communicate
and interact. We are creating a 24/7 digital universe that is changing our concepts
of markets, the value of information, systems of social networking, political dynamics. And the revolution is far from having run its course. Twitter will be obsolete before I ever get around to using it.
The Internet and blogs are changing politics. Blogs are beginning to lead - not follow - traditional news media. The growth of Web data is an unimaginable order of magnitude greater than trade and investment.
Overlay on this the demographics of aging. While aging has always been a personal
reality, it had never been a problem for whole societies. Today, all industrial countries
are aging, with impending declines in the working-age population. The impacts will
be profound, affecting pensions, health care, education, housing, immigration and
economic growth. Aging will put an incredible premium on skilled workers, and shift
the "wealth of nations" to countries with younger, educated populations. The hunt
for talent will become more global and more of a preoccupation.
If the effects of aging are profound, the consequences of climate change are uncertain
and unsettling. While the answer is obvious - to change behaviour you have to change
its price in a market-based system - the way forward is not. Copenhagen didn't inspire confidence that the multilateral system can manage climate change. And the responses of major emitters don't inspire confidence that they are willing and able to tackle
it domestically, let alone collectively. Climate change may become the litmus test
of the G20's effectiveness and durability.
A VOLATILE RECOVERY
The world economy is now in recovery after the great recession. But just as this was not a typical recession, nor will it be a standard recovery. This global
recovery will be remembered for its uncertainty, volatility and overhanging imbalances. The U.S. recovery will be tepid by comparison with previous cyclical rebounds, constrained by lingering unemployment, debt, government deficits and too little savings.
Canada should outperform the U.S., supported by strong commodity prices and healthy balance
sheets, but there are limits to our ability to decouple. Asia will be a much faster-growing
region, buoyed by demographics and low-cost production, but hampered by too much savings, too little consumption and too much reliance on trade-led growth.
Europe will be a slow-growth area, weighed down by demographics, unaffordable entitlement
programs, and large deficits and debt. Markets seem predisposed to react vigorously to each unexpected economic tea leaf, reinforcing volatility.
Fiscal-policy exit strategies are equally challenging. Deficits are high and structural
in a number of G7 countries, and higher still in a number of smaller industrial countries.
Estimates suggest a doubling of U.S. debt levels over the next five years, with similar
projections for Japan and the euro zone. With pervasive globalization, unsustainable fiscal situations in small countries such as Greece can threaten systematic
stability, and growing debt burdens - even in reserve currencies - can unsettle markets if there
is no clear light at the end of the fiscal tunnel.
With political gridlock in the U.S. and elsewhere, combined with renewed worries about the recovery's strength, the risk is that deficits will remain large for
longer periods. The ensuing debt imbalances will only reinforce the shifting economic centre
of gravity away from low-saving, heavily indebted, industrial countries.
CANADA'S STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES To an extent that we had not seen in the postwar period, the Canadian economy
outperformed the U.S. in the recession and is continuing to do so in recovery. Canada's strengths
are impressive and extend well beyond our strong fiscal situation, stable financial
sector, bountiful resources, agriculture capacity and proximity to the richest market
in the world.
They include our "public infrastructure" of resilient institutions of government and governance: Canada's professional and non-partisan public services; our
social safety nets that reassure in times of turbulence; our values, rule of law and respect
for diversity; our largely non-ideological approach to public policy; and our civility and openness in political discourse. Yet some of these strengths of our
Westminster model of governance are beginning to fray, and this should be cause for public concern.
While Canada stands out, the shifting global economy presents opportunities and risks.
Our challenge will be to leverage strengths, tackle weaknesses and take initiatives to reposition ourselves for the changing order.
On the economic horizon, a key weakness is Canada's poor productivity performance.
Consider: Canada's business sector has an average productivity level that is now only 75 per cent of that of the U.S. A dollar near parity and aging demographics place an urgency on improving our productivity performance. This "productivity deficit"
relative to the U.S. costs Canadians more than $300-billion a year, or $10,000 per
capita. And yet governments are not seriously contemplating how to close it.
The broader challenge is about how well and how quickly Canada will adjust to the
global drivers of change affecting all countries: tackling demographics and their wide-ranging impacts from health care to education to pensions; tackling the
rise of Asia and its implications for our foreign policy; tackling climate change in all
its immense ramifications. But a risk to early and effective action is a political environment in Canada that has shifted to a short-term focus, leaving few forums
to discuss and achieve consensus on the broad structural trends that are reshaping
our world.
While the world economy is emerging from the great global recession, the global environment is volatile, and global drivers of change are propelling us toward new global alignments.
In the midst of this lies the opportunity for Canada to stake out new markets in emerging-economy giants like China, India and Brazil, to refocus our market
presence in the United States toward rapidly growing regions and sectors, and to make Canada
more innovative in what we produce and more productive in how we produce it. It is
an opportunity we cannot afford to squander.
Kevin Lynch is vice-chair of BMO Financial Group, former clerk of the Privy Council and secretary to the cabinet.
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