The ABC's of Independence A The Economy

The ABCD of Sovereignty present Four voices for sovereignty. I always have the role of warming up the crowd with economic arguments It might be a little complex for some But you will understand I hope how the economic arguments As we move closer to a third referendum engagement And the good news is for those who have to leave earlier... You will have seen the better of the four presentations Therefore, I have always... I was ten on the first referendum in 1980 I didn't really understand the issues It was only when I was about 11 that I did. But on the second referendum I was a little bit more active I was 25 I was an economic student at the time I was a member of Economists for Sovereignty Already then I believed we had to insist on economic issues I say this because, because... Sovereignty... there are two great views on that Either it's in your heart, or it's in your mind Those who believe it's in their hearts and want to talk about language, culture and identity I also share their concerns but I belong to the economist and financial groups And for those who share economic concerns many are yet to be convinced Those who believe our culture, our language our identity our history lead us to want our own country They, I believe, vote YES. And the support there is relatively strong. And so I think, what will make us win the third referendum is to maintain this base But also gain those who wonder if we have the means to be sovereign And that's where sadly the federalists are very persuasive in scaring Quebecers At the onset of both referendum we saw the same scaremongering with the economy, finance And it's on those issues we will need to focus on for the next engagement In fact we can already do it now, But it will need to be clarified with our fellow citizens That Québec economically has everything to gain by becoming a country These people, I call them pragmatists or "homo economicus" and they wonder... Do we have the means to be a country Both conditions are necessary by the way I think we need cultural reasons to become a country But also have the means of our cultural claims And those means we have them and not in a small measure Québec in fact in the world today, not many are as lucky as us for the coming generations We will come to this and so will my colleagues They also have many reasons to believe this What will the federalists say at the onset of the next referendum? The same scare tactics on the debt, relative worth on currency and so on we will look at a few and I hope at the end there will be questions If there are federalist arguments that have sometimes made you doubt Many times Sovereignists discussing with Federalist friends and some arguments may make them doubt... equalization (Barnett Formula) is another we will talk about in a few moments All these arguments are false. They are based on false premises We need to take them apart when we discuss these issues with federalists I am convinced that we can deliver this message to our population and we keep an eye out on the romantics who believe in the culture and language... if can get the pragmatics we will have a very strong majority not 50%+1 a strong, clear majority who will say Yes to a referendum, Yes we want a country. Let's take these federalists fears one by one or at least those that come up most frequently: the debt Quebec would be much too deep in debt if we became a country First, right now Québec is less in debt than the average of countries in the world. There is an organization called the OECD it comprises a bit fewer than 30 rich countries 30 most industrialized, most developed countries If Québec was part of it as a country we would be less in debt than there average If none of these countries say they are too much in debt to be a country... why should we say we are too much in debt to become one However, we can see in the media (I'm not referring to the media of the same name) that quasi-scientific studies say that we are like Greece or other such countries in technical bankruptcy so much we are in debt but these studies compare debts that are not comparable, first of all There are about ten different ways of describing national debt there's raw debt, net debt, long term debt and so on and when we compare Quebec's net debt, including financial assets the overall picture looking at the assets and liabilities, Québec is less in debt than the average of the OECD countries. Secondly we are often told we will need to take on our share of the federal debt and this will burden you even more But as I have you need to look at both assets and liabilities If you say debt you need to talk about financial assets as well. Quebec income taxes have been used to build everything that's in Canada since the beginning of the History of Canada Let's not forget that and when you do a true financial statement some assets outside Québec will belong to us by right for having contributed in its existence by 20-25% So this argument that we would be bogged down in debt is completely mad because, there are assets outside Québec that belong to us. the currency issue would Québec still have the Canadian dollar after a winning referendum and would Canada allow us to use its currency You should know the country in the world most likely to want us keeping the Canadian dollar is Canada. I say this because a currency on the world market I can say this, this is what I do, I come from that field a currency is a commodity like any other tomorrow morning if Québec wanted to use the Japanese Yen no one, not even Japan, could stop us if we wanted to use the Euro, we could use the Euro tomorrow morning a currency can be sold and can be bought on world markets like anything else therefore, if Canada forced us not to use the Canadian dollar we would need to sell all of our reserves and pricing in Canadian dollars in Québec which means that overnight Canada would see a quarter of its money supply for sale this would make the Canadian dollar plummet and Canada would be in dire straights on the economic markets Canada would be the first to come knocking on our door to keep the Canadian dollar after a winning referendum. all the fear mongering concerning the currency needs to be stopped Is Québec too small economically to become a country? On thing that really helps us, by the way the answer to that is no one thing that really helps us there is globalisation globalisation makes an economy's size irrelevant (in English) some federalists will understand that word better perhaps the size of an economy has no impact on its prosperity proof for that if you take the ten richest countries in the world 9 are smaller or as big as Québec economically Finland, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg ans so on... and 9 out of the 10 richest countries are smaller or as big in geographic size you just need to find a niche where we excel and sell it to others and prosper Québec has all it needs you know, in Canada, Québec is the most economically open jurisdiction we export 50% of what we produce that's phenomenal compared to Canada and the United States in comparison, Canada exports 30-35% of what it produces and the US 10-12%. so Québec is extremely open economically already we are in that globalisation movement and we have everything to gain to not only talk to our immediate neighbours but to the whole world as an independent country negotiate our international economic agreements ourselves for example so all these arguments about size are completely useless that they should try to scare us with that form federalists because Québec is already properous and imagine... we are already prosperous with only half of our toolbox I want to come back to that we send half of our taxes, roughly, to simplify half of our taxes to a federalist government in Ottawa that does not take our interests to heart at all, our economic interests no interest when they develop an economic strategy, negotiate international treaties make a decision or to develop a given industrial sector we've arrived to the point where we are so prosperous with only half of our toolbox and when I say so prosperous...again compared with other countries on the planet again to come back to the OECD The coalition of rich countries, Québec right now, is richer than the average of the OECD countries so people who say we are poorer than our neighbours... that is also a defeatist argument that we have to catch up to our neighbours relative to wealth because we are so inadequate here, less productive, poorer first we must be very careful with those sorts of comparisons for many reasons but first of all, they use gross averages using total populations divided by national wealth and they say Americans are richer at X level Quebecers are rich at Y level therefore they are richer than us you need to be very careful about that because it doesn't take into account of cost of living first of all for having been often in New York in a previous part of my life can I tell you a three bedroom apartment there costs 4 million dollars you need a good salary to buy that however these simplistic comparisons will not tell you, absolutely nothing, about the cost of living so if you are 40% richer in one state but it costs you 60% more to live there you are not any richer at the end of the day All this to say...is that using the GDP by population formula is very pernicious because it doesn't take into account wealth distribution across the population and the United States are the best example for that they are by far the largest and most powerful economy in the world but wealth disparities are absolutely unacceptable at the height of the 2008-2009 crisis 40 million Americans used emergency food help that's pretty basic as needs go 40 millions of our American neighbours had to use food stamps at the same time, at the other end of the spectrum, the ultra rich 12 Americans in that category are worth all of Québec the 12 richest Americans, among the richest in the world obviously, are worth the net worth 300 billion of Quebec: 12. So imagine you have on one hand 12 that are worth all of Québec and on the other 40 million who need help to eat that's not what I call collective wealth and in Québec there is a measure a statistic that is never used by scare mongering federalists Québec is the place in the Americas where there is the least violence, most social equality, best social net for those who go through a rough patch in their lives and that is worth its weight in gold for social peace and there isn't a country that can prosper without this social peace and for that in Québec we are the best in the Americas and the federalists will not say this so when they come back with arguments that we are X% poorer than our neighbours we really need to criticise these arguments I repeat we are richer than the OECD average countries, the group of richest countries and that's with only half of our toolbox I repeat we are a simple province and I hate that word province Did anyone here do Latin? The word province comes from pro-victis : territory of the vanquished in the Roman Empire, this is how they called the area surrounding Rome for the conquered peoples so it doesn't really apply to Québec, I prefer jurisdiction or government or even state (Thank you Bernard...) than province, the others the other 9 English speaking provinces I call them provinces with pleasure but here...it's not the same and another argument they use is equalisation (Barnett formula) that's often their final argument for federalists you depend on equalisation so if you separate you will lose it there is so much to say about equalisation that we could do a three hour conference on that topic alone equalisation, first of all, Canada doesn't own the recipe in many OECD countries, to get back to them again, most of these countries have an equalisation system and Canada is the second to last stingiest in terms of equalisation it's not even 1% of the GNP that's used for that so... but in countries such as Japan, Norway and even Mexico it's up to 4% of the GNP that is redistributed in that way so it's not a Canadian magic recipe first of all secondly, Québec, we often hear is the main recipient of this system again the federalists will say this many billions are given to Québec therefore you strongly depend on equalisation if we take the global numbers, yes, it's true there are almost 8 million Quebecers right now if you multiply this by whatever percentage of equalisation you will get a big number but if you look at equalisation per person we are in the place where we get the least in all Canada excluding Ontario that has just started to receive some so, of all the other provinces, all the Canadian territories that receive equalisation Québec per person is the one that gets the least Federalists will not tell you that they prefer giving you the total number Which makes us look like we're a bunch of beggars secondly, if we have better social services, more generous, in Québec than elsewhere in America it's not because Canada finances them out of equalisation it's because our income tax is higher than elsewhere and we decided collectively to finance them we pay for them, not Canada, they are not giving charity money to us by way of equalisation so that we may have more social services compared to our neighbours all of the federalist arguments of an economic nature are based on false premises Obviously most federalists know this because they also are aware of the situation but they will cut their sentence short to where they look the best obviously before the "yes...but" and every Federalist argument has a "yes... but" that invalidates it and for me there is an economic argument, or of pride, or global that I always love remind people of the history of the world there has never been one country that has lamented having its independence. it's never happened in history all these countries, not one has said I'd like to go back to being a district or province or a territory of my former master it's never happened and none of these territories were as rich and diversified as Québec is right now as a simple province again, we have been able to rise up to level of rich countries on the planet just imagine what we could do if we controlled all our taxes because right now you know, the taxes we control in Québec are used mainly at everything that is social, health, education, everything related to economic development we have to use the taxes we have given to Ottawa in Ottawa they invest it the automobile industry in Ontario and in the Tar sands in Alberta so, we are getting cheated economically and with the environment we are also getting cheated, my colleagues will explain there is money related to environmental development plans as well the carbon markets that will appear in the world soon could bring in billions to Québec who could sell non-pollution credits while being a simple province Québec will have to pay its share of Canada's pollution so, we will pay instead of receiving all we can imagine in terms of economic and environment plan industrial, directly economic, Quebec has everything to win as a country who will decide its own economic development plan so sovereignty is very simple: three things Manage all its income taxes vote all our laws and sign all our treaties ourselves right now in these three areas, what we give to Ottawa does not serve our interests because Ottawa doesn't share the same priorities with Québec, at all so, bring on a third referendum so that we can clearly explain the economic arguments because from what I've seen, it's always on economic discussions based on fear that the federalists want to bring us because they think they will get votes out of it but the next time we will have to show them clearly that we are informed that we are well equipped, fear-mongering will have no effect and I think we can aim at a good 60-65%, whatever the number, if we win we win I think the Quebecois if they are well informed and see that the fear-mongering are unhealthy and ill informed will follow us wholeheartedly in this great project Thank you very much for your attention