When Canada hosts a meeting of the G-20 in Toronto today it will offer no apologies for the country’s reputation as boring. Indeed, it will hold up its stodginess as a virtue.
“If Canada’s financial system is boring,” Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty wrote in the Financial Times in November 2008 as global financial markets were coming unglued, “perhaps the world needs to be more like Canada.” “Few countries are as dependent on trade or as integrated into the global financial system as Canada,” Mr. Flaherty continued. “Yet our financial sector continues to weather the turbulence better than many other countries. This did not happen by chance.”
Canada did not have a banking crisis in 2008 and, despite its vulnerability to U.S. economic weakness it emerged from recession in the third quarter of last year. With roughly the same population as California and the equivalent of Brazil’s GDP, our northern neighbor is now leading the pushback against the tax-and-spend agenda of some of the more powerful members of the G-20.
Tax cuts, limits on stimulus spending, a strong currency and freer trade. Who says Canada is boring?
