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Canada has been wringing its hands over brain drain for decades. The appeal of a bigger market and higher wages in the United States has long wooed educated Canadians to move south. It’s also drawn the attention of policymakers concerned by those ditching their homeland and taking their businesses with them. Today, it’s not just human capital flight but also industry flight that’s keeping Canadian leaders up at night. While neither country is keen to come out and say it – you know, as best friends and neighbors – Canada and the US are locked in a zero-sum subsidies battle over cleantech and other green industry growth. And the US is winning. The Biden administration is pumping hundreds of billions in corporate subsidies into the economy just as the US market is warming to the green industry. With Canada facing a severe housing and healthcare crisis, both human capital and the companies employing those humans will increasingly look south. Earlier this week, the CBC highlighted the story of Kanin Energy, a cleantech company based in Calgary that recently opened a Texas office to “double down and grow” in the US. The company’s CEO, Janice Tran, said that without more support from Ottawa, she’d be shifting operations and projects to the US. Some biofuel producers are threatening to do the same, with one, Parkland, having already made the move. What’s in Canada’s arsenal? Canada has a suite of green tax credits that include tax breaks for electricity investment, cleantech manufacturing, hydrogen investment, carbon capture and storage investment, and cleantech investment. Introduced in the March 2023 budget, the tax breaks are worth about CA$80 billion over the course of a decade. But this trails far behind the US, where the IRA is worth roughly US$370 billion (CA$480 billion). And if the shortfall wasn’t bad enough, now the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters group says the Liberal government is moving too slow on getting the promised cash flowing. This increases the likelihood that businesses will chase IRA bucks south of the border. An April report by TD Bank says Canada’s financial support for clean energy is “yielding positive results” and has “established a competitive position relative to the US.” It estimates that the government has spent “5% of nominal GDP” – or CA$139 billion – since 2021 on clean and green tech. This is a higher percentage of GDP than the US Inflation Reduction Act, which is 1.5% of the US economy. But the bank also notes – surprise, surprise – that the Canadian government must keep spending the big bucks to stay competitive with US subsidies. Lest anyone think the capital cash funnel only runs from Canada to the US, Europe is facing a similar challenge. With an eye on a more generous and coherent subsidy regime, European green companies are moving to the US to chase IRA funding. Some are coming to Canada, too. Volkswagen took nearly CA$14 billion in subsidies to open an EV battery plant in St. Thomas, Ontario. In March 2022, multinational conglomerate automaker Stellantis struck a deal with the feds to build a plant in Windsor, Ontario – but it stopped construction in the wake of the VW package and is fighting for even more money that it’s likely to get. Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says a new deal “is coming.” Stellantis was able to leverage both the IRA and the VW deal to extract more money from the federal government and the province of Ontario. What’s not in Canada’s arsenal? There’s more to all of this than the IRA and recent subsidy plays. Canada’s innovation and industry growth strategies are plagued – across sectors – by a handful of persistent shortcomings, experts say. Government departments are risk averse, the private sector is light on investment capital, bureaucracy is impossible to navigate, and the country is bad at procurement, especially when it comes to buying from and supporting its own domestic companies. For decades, Canada has deployed a branch plant strategy that relies on luring foreign multinational corporations, particularly from the US, to set up shop in Canada. When Canada does try to invest in value-added industry, it’s late to the market – as it was with EV batteries, leaving the government without leverage and held hostage by established companies who extracted billions in subsidies, such as VW and Stellantis. When companies do finally arrive, it’s foreign operators who gobble up all the tax credit and grant money while Canadian startups wither on the vine. The government doesn't bet on its own companies, leaving workers and businesses to choose to either fight with big foreign entities, to fold, or to flee. That third option, leaving, seems to be increasingly appealing – so Canada faces massive pressure to preserve and grow its nascent cleantech industry. For its part, the US is keen to lean into growing its domestic producers, and to lure others away from Canada and Europe. Mike Andrade, CEO of Toronto-based Morgan Solar, says Canada has a “risk-averse energy sector” that is addicted to, indeed captured by, the oil and gas industry and preferentially supported by provincial regulatory regimes that hamper cleantech development and implementation. “Both countries north and south of the border are saying ‘We’re going to spend money on cleantech’ but north of the border, ours looks like more status quo continuation, and south of the border I see more disruptive things happening,” he says. While the US is combining a more open attitude to cleantech development with a friendly market environment, Canada lags behind the US and other OECD countries in its approach to green energy projects. “What Canada can’t keep up with is a regulatory structure that encourages innovation in energy combined with manufacturing subsidies to locate manufacturing plants in the states, all reinforced with preferential treatment for things made in the states for customers to buy,” Andrade says. Canada needs to support its industries early and as they scale up, experts say. It could choose to go all-in on cleantech — solar, wind, batteries, or all of the above – but it would have to loosen its grip on oil and gas and the provincial regulatory regimes that keep the country reliant on it. “Canada is exceptionally good at creating intellectual property and terrible at commercializing it,” Andrade notes. “And I think that’s where the focus of the money needs to be. How do we help these companies at the crossroads scale up and stay in Canada now that they’ve created the intellectual property?”

Canadian experts on intellectual property and copyright are warning that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement could hurt the country’s rapidly growing tech sector. Some IP lawyers, professors and specialists say that while Canada did not make any serious concessions on intellectual property (IP), the proposed deal would broaden protections in a way that gives an inherent advantage to IP-rich U.S. tech giants. This, they say, puts Canadian innovators in a weak position just as the country tries to reframe its economy as innovation-focused. Canada would have some IP wins in the USMCA, including the ability to retain its “notice and notice” response system for copyright-infringement, which focuses on educating consumers about copyright rather than taking legal action for violations. But other shifts have experts frustrated, including an extension of copyright to the date of the creator’s death plus 70 years, up from life plus 50. The agreement would also extend protection of some biologically derived drugs from generic competitors to 10 years from eight. But critics are most concerned that Canada may have missed the chance to rebalance IP policy in its favour. In 2016, Canada brought in $5.6-billion for the use of IP, and paid out $14-billion to use IP, according to Statistics Canada. “By strengthening IP across the board, the IP-rich Americans just got considerably wealthier today,” said Jim Hinton, a patent lawyer and founder of the consulting firm Own Innovation in Waterloo, Ont. “As an IP poor nation, Canada is left footing that bill.” Richard Gold, a McGill University law professor and founding director of the Canadian Centre for Intellectual Property Policy, warned that USMCA would not end what he sees as an unfair U.S. patent system. While patent holders in the United States can sue wherever the company or defendant is located, Canadian firms can sue in the defendant’s jurisdiction only, he said. This, he continued, could discriminate against non-U.S. patent owners. The three countries agreed to set up a committee to discuss IP matters, including the choice of venue for litigation – an issue the federal government has said it hopes to address in its national IP strategy. Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, said in an e-mailed statement that the agreement’s language would “support the competitiveness of our creators and innovators, while providing Canadian exporters and investors with a predictable and transparent framework of rules.” Myra Tawfik, a law professor who works with IP commercialization at the University of Windsor, echoed that sentiment. “It’s not a level playing field, so any concessions we make on IP do not work in our favour,” she said. “… We continue to trade this off for other priorities without considering how important IP rights are for sustained prosperity in the knowledge economy.” Similarly, Jim Balsillie – who brought many innovations to market as the former cochief executive of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion – released a statement on Monday calling on Ottawa to build IP assets and "reduce the damage this agreement will do to our future prosperity.” Even something as simple as extending the term for copyright by 20 years “will make it more difficult to access and disseminate [copyrighted] information for the benefit of all Canadians,” said Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in internet and ecommerce law at the University of Ottawa.

Canadian experts on intellectual property and copyright are warning that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement could hurt the country’s rapidly growing tech sector. Some IP lawyers, professors and specialists say that while Canada did not make any serious concessions on intellectual property (IP), the proposed deal would broaden protections in a way that gives an inherent advantage to IP-rich U.S. tech giants. This, they say, puts Canadian innovators in a weak position just as the country tries to reframe its economy as innovation-focused. Canada would have some IP wins in the USMCA, including the ability to retain its “notice and notice” response system for copyright-infringement, which focuses on educating consumers about copyright rather than taking legal action for violations. But other shifts have experts frustrated, including an extension of copyright to the date of the creator’s death plus 70 years, up from life plus 50. The agreement would also extend protection of some biologically derived drugs from generic competitors to 10 years from eight. But critics are most concerned that Canada may have missed the chance to rebalance IP policy in its favour. In 2016, Canada brought in $5.6-billion for the use of IP, and paid out $14-billion to use IP, according to Statistics Canada. “By strengthening IP across the board, the IP-rich Americans just got considerably wealthier today,” said Jim Hinton, a patent lawyer and founder of the consulting firm Own Innovation in Waterloo, Ont. “As an IP poor nation, Canada is left footing that bill.” Richard Gold, a McGill University law professor and founding director of the Canadian Centre for Intellectual Property Policy, warned that USMCA would not end what he sees as an unfair U.S. patent system. While patent holders in the United States can sue wherever the company or defendant is located, Canadian firms can sue in the defendant’s jurisdiction only, he said. This, he continued, could discriminate against non-U.S. patent owners. The three countries agreed to set up a committee to discuss IP matters, including the choice of venue for litigation – an issue the federal government has said it hopes to address in its national IP strategy. Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, said in an e-mailed statement that the agreement’s language would “support the competitiveness of our creators and innovators, while providing Canadian exporters and investors with a predictable and transparent framework of rules.” Myra Tawfik, a law professor who works with IP commercialization at the University of Windsor, echoed that sentiment. “It’s not a level playing field, so any concessions we make on IP do not work in our favour,” she said. “… We continue to trade this off for other priorities without considering how important IP rights are for sustained prosperity in the knowledge economy.” Similarly, Jim Balsillie – who brought many innovations to market as the former cochief executive of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion – released a statement on Monday calling on Ottawa to build IP assets and "reduce the damage this agreement will do to our future prosperity.” Even something as simple as extending the term for copyright by 20 years “will make it more difficult to access and disseminate [copyrighted] information for the benefit of all Canadians,” said Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in internet and ecommerce law at the University of Ottawa.

It has impressive research bench strength. It has billions of federal dollars for the taking. It’s kind of a nice place to live. But when it comes to turning knowledge of artificial intelligence into companies, products and investment, Canada is lagging behind – and, some experts argue, actively shooting itself in the foot. Why give up all that brain power to Silicon Valley? That was a major line of questioning as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke recently with tech journalists on a niche New York Times podcast. “We’re proud of Canada’s early role in developing AI,” Trudeau said on Hard Fork, noting that many breakthroughs have happened because Canadian scientists are well-funded. In 2017, Canada became the first country to have a national AI strategy. It launched a second phase five years later, allocating $443-million to connect research capacity with programs aimed at enabling commercialization. This year’s federal budget included an additional $2.4-billion investment in AI. And the government has boasted that Canada has 10 per cent of “the world’s top-tier AI researchers, the second most in the world.” Among them are two so-called godfathers of AI. But Ottawa is “fighting to make sure we keep our skin in the game,” Trudeau told the podcast hosts. He made the pitch, saying Canada has many of the ingredients it needs: among other things, clean energy, a good quality of life for workers and government programs to encourage the sector. In spite of that, Canada hasn’t always been “great at commercializing,” Trudeau conceded. More than that, Canadians have “fallen far behind,” argued Benjamin Bergen, president of the Council of Canadian Innovators, which represents the tech sector. The government spent “a tremendous amount on the talent side of the equation,” he said recently, but not on converting it “into building companies.” Bergen said the government has “institutionalized the transfer of our AI intellectual property to foreign firms.” The government’s 2022 strategy update promised that the country’s three AI institutes are “helping to translate research in artificial intelligence into commercial applications and growing the capacity of businesses to adopt these new technologies.” But Bergen argued an AI strategy focused on commercialization must start with Canada owning its own IP. “You cannot commercialize what you don’t own. Intellectual property lawyer Jim Hinton has been trying to quantify that problem. And the numbers show “a train wreck I’ve been watching happen in slow motion,” he said. About three-quarters of patents produced by researchers who work for Toronto’s Vector Institute and Montreal’s Mila leave the country, and most of these are in the hands of Big Tech, Hinton’s research has found. Another 18 per cent of the 244 patents he tracked – 198 from Vector and 46 from Mila – are now owned by North American academic institutions. Just seven per cent are held in the Canadian private sector. Of the foreign-owned patents, the largest number, 65, went to Uber, while 35 landed with the Walt Disney Company. Nvidia, which recently displaced Microsoft as the world’s most valuable company, got 34. IBM ended up with 15 and Google with 12. A handful of the patents were co-owned. Foreign companies benefit from Canada’s public funding, Hinton argued, and there are “no guardrails put on the ability for these foreign companies to basically pillage Canada’s really good AI invention.” Researchers can work at the AI institutes and foreign tech companies at the same time, Hinton said, charging that this is what allows the tech giants to take advantage. The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, which co-ordinates the government’s AI strategy, pushed back strongly on that assertion. Executive director Elissa Strome said a “small number of our researchers” have part-time employment in the private sector. “Those private-sector organizations own the rights to the IP that is generated by those researchers,” she said, but only when they’re on the clock for those companies. Strome said it’s long-standing practice in Canadian research “that there are relationships around contract research with industry,” and “a really strong firewall” is in place between IP generated via public funds at the AI institutes and that which is generated through private funds.

The artificial intelligence boom presents Canada with unique opportunities and risks as we seek to benefit from a technology that could reshape how we live. In this special series,Canada’s AI Advantage, The Logic examines how Canadian companies, investors, institutions and workers can gain from the country’s early lead in AI, even as Canada’s pioneers in the field become the world’s most powerful voices of caution. Deon Nicholas was in high school when he was initiated into Canada’s emerging AI industry. It started with back-to-back summer internships at the renowned Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii). There, Nicholas worked alongside some of the world’s greatest AI thinkers, including Richard Sutton, known as the godfather of reinforcement learning, whose research laid the foundation for technologies like ChatGPT. After that first internship in 2010, Nicholas—who said he barely knew what AI was before—was hooked on machine learning. He went on to study computer science and math at the University of Waterloo, and worked on AI projects off the side of his desk. He took online courses outside the university on natural language processing, and co-authored an academic paper with researchers back at Amii. Despite his early exposure to Canada’s AI pipeline, when it came time to start his own company, Nicholas opted to launch it in San Francisco—pulled into the Bay Area orbit surrounding Big Tech. “I didn’t actually think about going anywhere else,” said Nicholas, now the co-founder and CEO of venture-backed generative AI startup Forethought. Nicholas is among the sprawling network of global AI experts whose careers began in Canada, many of them getting their start at one of the country’s three AI institutes, which—along with Amii in Edmonton—include the Vector Institute in Toronto and Mila in Montreal. This hotbed of talent—much of it developed under the supervision of world-class AI researchers including Sutton, Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio—has helped establish Canada as a global leader in the sector. Over 4,000 people in the country enrolled in or graduated from AI programs in 2022–23, according to a recent Deloitte Canada report, ranking it first among G7 nations in the number of AI research publications per capita that year. “Of the world’s most elite AI researchers (i.e., the top 0.5 per cent),” the report reads, “six per cent call Canada home.” Talking Points Canada has been a hotbed of AI talent, with some of the sector’s top thinkers having worked in the country and trained a generation of researchers and developers But as more companies, investors and governments outside Canada funnel massive resources into the sector, the country is at more risk than ever of losing its homegrown talent In the past year, however, following the launch of ChatGPT, competition for this talent has become fierce. Job postings on LinkedIn that mention AI or generative AI more than doubled globally between July 2021 and July 2023. Big Tech companies offer hundreds of thousands of dollars for AI engineer jobs, while a product manager at Netflix could earn up to US$900,000 a year. Amazon plans to train two million people globally by 2025 through its “AI Ready” program, after an AWS survey found that while 73 per cent of employers said hiring AI workers was a priority, almost three-quarters of those employers said they can’t find the AI-related talent they need. The Biden administration plans to bolster Washington’s “data and technology strategies” through a “government-wide AI talent surge.” “A lot of U.S. companies are really willing to invest and go hard in the area,” said Amii CEO Cam Linke. “A lot of that talent that wants to build big, interesting things is evaluating whether or not Canada is the place that they can do that.” Brain drain is of course not unique to Canada’s AI sector. The country’s robust research institutions have generated large talent pools in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields in particular. After earning an education and research experience in Canada, some of that talent inevitably moves south, where there tends to be a greater abundance of high-paying jobs. The dynamic often leaves Canadian companies scrambling for the very talent the country’s universities trained. But the consequences for Canada of losing its AI talent are potentially more severe than with other industries. AI promises to transform virtually every aspect of the economy and society—from education, to health care, to law and transportation. “If we are not attracting talent, developing talent, our companies are not going to be able to be good adopters of this technology,” said Salim Teja, a partner at Toronto-based AI venture capital firm Radical Ventures. “And our innovators are not going to have access to the talent that they need.” A photo of Forethought CEO Deon Nicholas, wearing a black T-shirt with a white shirt over it, and denim jeans. Deon Nicholas, CEO and co-founder of Forethought. Photo: Handout/Forethought Nicholas said he was drawn to Silicon Valley after working two co-op placements as an undergraduate student there—the first with Facebook and later at the data-analytics giant Palantir. The prestige of those firms and generous wages made them hard for Nicholas to resist. When he began thinking of starting his own company—having by then established a peer network in the Valley—San Francisco was an obvious choice. “One of the things I found about the Bay Area was that the network, that connectivity, and the culture of people starting companies is unparalleled,” he said. Since launching Forethought, which uses generative AI for customer service, in 2018, Nicholas has recruited other Canadians to work for him. The company has hired University of Waterloo co-op students and graduates, sponsoring visas to relocate some of them to the U.S. It also has a partnership with Amii to collaborate on research and access talent to help fill jobs at Forethought. Nicholas said he’s keen to hire more remote workers based in Canada. It means he can pay lower salaries than what’s typical in Silicon Valley, and he hopes it will help him qualify for Canada’s flagship research incentive, the scientific research and economic development tax credit. “A lot of that talent that wants to build big, interesting things is evaluating whether or not Canada is the place that they can do that.” Chris Welsh, founder and partner at the Toronto-based staffing and recruiting firm People Machine, told The Logicthat companies can hire two employees in Toronto for the price of one in Silicon Valley, when including the exchange rate. While earning a handsome salary is important for AI professionals, they’re also driven to work on exciting new technologies, and opportunities that give them purpose. There are growing opportunities in AI aimed at tackling issues related to climate change and the health-care industry, Welsh said. People want to “feel like they’re making society better, as opposed to just selling more product.” A photo of Promise Robotics co-founder and CEO Ramtin Attar. He is wearing a white shirt and a powder-blue blazer. Promise Robotics co-founder and CEO Ramtin Attar. Photo: Handout/Promise Robotics At Toronto-based Promise Robotics, many applicants are drawn to the company’s mission to help solve the housing and climate crisis, according to co-founder and CEO Ramtin Attar. The two-year-old software company uses AI to train robots to build energy-efficient houses through processes that cut back on material waste. Since raising close to $21 million in October, Attar said Promise has had a flood of job applications. But the company—which Attar said has grown its workforce by 200 per cent since May—has still found recruiting for senior AI experts challenging. “Either, as a startup, you cannot afford it in the early days,” he said, “or they’re just more comfortable on the research side.” The excitement that ChatGPT has created around large language models (LLM) is another obstacle for Promise, said Attar, with some applicants dropping out of the hiring process in favour of jobs that focus on LLMs. That’s not to say Canada hasn’t tried to get ahead of the AI talent wars. In 2017, Ottawa launched the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, a core focus of which was to attract, train and retain AI talent. The federal government selected the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) to lead the talent part of the strategy, arming the think tank with over $200 million for the initiative. CIFAR’s strategy centres on appointing research chairs to Canada’s three AI institutes. It’s sponsored 122 chairs since 2018, and in 2023 alone, 254 students supervised by those chairs graduated from master’s, PhD or postdoctoral programs. While generous salaries and prestigious work with tech giants may lure some of this talent to the U.S., there’s some indication the volume of Canadian AI talent staying at home has actually been increasing. According to Deloitte Canada’s recent AI report, the vast majority—about 92 per cent since 2018—of AI master’s program graduates affiliated with the Vector Institute in Toronto stay in Ontario after graduation. Canada’s big banks, for instance, rely on talent from academic institutions and research organizations when recruiting. Foteini Agrafioti, head of RBC’s research centre, Borealis AI, said the centre understands the “value, thought leadership and information” they bring and is focused on strengthening relationships with them, including CIFAR and the Vector Institute, as well as other accelerators and organizations in the Canadian AI ecosystem. (RBC was recently recognized for outpacing its global banking peers in AI adoption, by the Evident AI Index.) Similarly, National Bank has numerous partnerships with universities and research centres, such as the Montreal-based Institute for Data Valorization, as a way to attract AI expertise. Teja warned against getting comfortable with rosy talent numbers. “The danger we have is, if we all feel like our mission is done, we’ll lose our stature globally,” he said, “because other regions and other countries around the world are equally as focused on ramping up their talent-development initiatives.” Retention rates also don’t necessarily mean these AI employees are all working for Canadian firms. The rise of remote work has created opportunities for Canadians to take U.S. jobs without relocating. Other U.S. companies have set up offices in Canada to take advantage of local talent. Unilever, for example, this month launched its global AI lab in Toronto. The London-based consumer-goods giant said in a press release that it chose the city because of its “concentration of AI expertise.” Canadian companies’ cautious adoption of the technology doesn’t bode well for local talent, either, said Teja. “If we’re creating a talent engine, and then there’s no receptors for all of the talent that we’re trying to scale, they’re going to go elsewhere.

Our health research and commercialization systems are in trouble – they need our attention now. We have a world-leading legacy in the life sciences. Canadians invented insulin, the pacemaker and the first Ebola vaccine. We discovered the genes that cause ALS and cystic fibrosis. Canadians are also pioneers in the field of regenerative medicine through the discovery of stem cells and how to use them to treat disease and illness.

Yet, despite our country’s ability to make groundbreaking discoveries, something happens along the way that is keeping us from realizing the full value of our research efforts. Many Canadian innovations never make it out of the lab. If they do, they end up south of the border.

Canadian-born, U.S.-based think-tank scholar (and past Hub Dialogues guest) Samuel Hammond recently tweeted: It only takes two decades of stagnant GDP growth to go from the economic frontier to a middle-income country. The ‘middle income trap’ is a continuous threat. Although his main observation was about development economics, Canadian policymakers shouldn’t ignore the underlying point. We’re in the midst of a lost economic decade. Our politics should be focused on avoiding a second. Last month’s release of GDP numbers for the fourth quarter of 2023 showed Canada’s real GDP per capita (a measure commonly used to as a proxy for living standards) declined once again. It’s now effectively at the same level as it was in the fourth quarter of 2014. There’s reason to believe that this period of stagnation and even declining economic conditions will persist. Unlike most of our peers, Canada isn’t expected to recover its pandemic losses until 2027. Thereafter the OECD projects that among its nearly 40 members, Canada will experience the slowest real GDP per capita growth out to 2060. Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne has rightly described these trends as a “growth crisis.” The risk isn’t necessarily that Canada slides down the development ladder—though our living standards are declining relative to our peers. The real threat is both less far-reaching and more insidious. Slow growth and stagnant living standards represent serious political economy challenges. They’re the long-run conditions for a zero-sum politics that can lead to a negative spiral of polarization, radicalism, and short-termism. The consequences for individuals and the economy as a whole could be significant. The Liberal Party’s recent online advertisement—“the economy is not numbers. The economy is people.”—was mocked a bit for its banality. But even if inadvertent, there’s an inherent insight there. Economic growth isn’t merely a statistical expression. It’s the material foundation of a peaceful, stable and ultimately forward-looking society. Simply put: Canada needs a dedicated policy agenda to restore economic growth and rescue us from a second lost decade. We’ll consider the possible components of a such pro-growth agenda in subsequent commentary for The Hub. But before we can judge the right mix of policies, we need to identify the causes and sources of our stagnation. We need to understand how we got lost in the first place. At the heart of Canada’s economic malaise is low productivity growth. Productivity is a fundamental driver of growth in incomes and living standards. The interrelationship between productivity and living standards is axiomatic: the more an economy can produce with less, the better off that society will be materially.

In the hyper-competitive global economy, business investment in research and development (R&D) is crucial because it drives technological innovation, which is a key factor in any country’s economic prosperity and national security. Yet Canada’s levels of business R&D are far off the pace in technologically advanced, globally traded sectors of the economy.

A recent analysis paints a stark picture, revealing yawning chasms, not just between Canada and the United States but also between Canada and the size-adjusted global averages for business R&D in nine advanced sectors. In 2021, U.S. firms spent almost 103 times more than their Canadian counterparts on R&D in these sectors, despite U.S. GDP being just 11.7 times larger than Canada’s. Worse, Canada was below the global average by a factor of almost five. Such disparities should serve as a clarion call for Canada to reevaluate the R&D incentives it provides firms.

Whether Canada likes it or not, increased competition between China and the United States will have significant implications for Canada’s domestic and global interests. As the United States seeks to compete and counter China through a collective approach with allies and partners, Washington will be increasingly looking towards Ottawa for support. Within the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, the legislation has a provision to create a strategy that would enhance cooperation with Canada in managing relations with China. As a result, there is increasing recognition in Washington that Canada can have a pivotal role in the U.S. competition with China. In a deeply divided America, challenging China’s rise as the world’s technology superpower has become a bipartisan issue between the Democrats and Republicans. In his first speech to Congress, President Joe Biden declared China as a “serious competitor” to the United States, calling upon legislators to boost governmental investment into scientific and technological research and development. His rally to the American people: ‘We are in a competition with China to win the 21st century.’ Locked in a fierce battle for technological primacy, the rivalry between China and the United States is still in its early stage. Both countries are fearful of losing any ground to the other in emerging fields that will define the 21st century, such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence. With its skilled and low-cost labor workforce, China has made tremendous progress on 5G networks, smartphones, drones and electric vehicles. However, for now, the United States continues to maintain its advantage in semi-conductors, an essential part of many innovative digital consumer products. Within both Houses of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate put forward legislations to boost U.S. scientific competitiveness by allocating billions in new funding for scientific research and technology to counter China’s growing economic and geopolitical influence. In response to Biden’s rally, the House of Representative’s passed two bipartisan bills in June 2021, National Science Foundation for the Future Act and the Department of Energy Science for the Future Act, investing $128 billion to federally-funded science and technology research. Similarly, the Senate’s U.S. Innovation and Competition Act would invest $250 billion. As the legislative packages navigate their respective ways into the House and Senate, the final package, to be negotiated between the two chambers, has the potential to be one of the few major bipartisan achievements of the current Congress. Since the election, the Biden administration has been actively rebuilding bilateral and multilateral ties with a robust emphasis on the need to collective address China’s economic, diplomatic, military, and technological rise. Most recently, the United States entered a trilateral security pact, AUKUS, with the UK and Australia to bolster its naval presence in the Indo-Pacific. In the communiqués from both the Carbis Bay G7 Meeting and the NATO Brussels Summit, China was explicitly mentioned, signaling that despite policy differences between Europe and the United States, common ground existed on issues such as the rules-based international order, human rights, security, political and trade issues. A fundamental difference between Trump and Biden in their approaches to China is Biden’s recognition that a collective response will be more effective than unilateral action. Middle power countries like Canada closely monitor the combative dynamics between Beijing and Washington for fears of entering an era of renewed great power competition as a new Cold War. Heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic as China and the United States compete to vaccinate their population and accelerate a post-pandemic economic recovery, both countries continue to be locked in prolonged conflict with very little progress made on de-escalating tensions. As the competition intensifies, there are concerns that both countries will fall into the “Thucydides’ Trap,” which maintains that war is inevitable when a rising power, China, challenges a dominant state, the United States. To avoid calamities between the two superpowers, Canada and other middle power countries will have to be prepared to navigate this rivalry that places their own interests and values at the forefront. Strategically, Canada has reinforced the need for the international community to strengthen a rules-based international order rather than a power-based one, managing competition between states with divergent values and interests. Many middle power countries are seeking to strike the right balance in their engagements with China and the United States – failure to do so could have consequential costs. Unfortunately, this is a reality Canada is all too familiar with. The consequence of being caught in the crossfire between China and the United States have not only contributed to the rapid deterioration of Canada China relations but have also been substantial for Canada in terms of human lives, trade, diplomacy, and politics. The end of the three-way diplomatic ordeal between Canada, China and the United States that resulted in the return of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou to China and Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor to Canada ended the stalemate in Canada’s bilateral relations with China, and also improved relations with the United States. However, it’s unlikely that Canada-China relations will improve anytime soon given recent announcements by Ottawa to join the diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and the pending decision on whether to ban Huawei 5G. In contrast, there is momentum for Canada and the United States to work together on China. This recognition was echoed by newly confirmed U.S. Ambassador David Cohen, who in an interview to the Globe and Mail, emphasized one of his duties is to work with Ottawa on ways to challenge China on a range of issues. Moreover, he characterized “China as our greatest threat” and the need for Canada and the United States to align their China policy. As the U.S. envoy stationed in Ottawa serving at the pleasure of the president, China will be a high-priority item on his agenda as the Biden administration continues to build coalition as part of their strategy in confronting, competing and countering China. Uniquely within the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, there is an explicit reference to Canada and the Canada-U.S. relationship. The reference illustrates a recognition by congressional leadership that as competition intensifies between Beijing and Washington, Canada can have a consequential role in the United States’ strategy in response to China’s rise as a global power. If passed, the legislation would require the President to submit a strategy within 90-days to Congress that describes how the United States will enhance cooperation with Canada in managing relations with China. The strategy is expected to cover key policy points of convergence and divergence in areas such as the Arctic, defense, democracy and human rights, technology, and trade. Moreover, at least twice a year for five years, the Secretary of State will report to Congress on the development and implementation of the strategy. The strategy would build upon the Roadmap for a Renewed U.S.-Canada Partnership announced during the virtual meeting in February 2021, and the bilateral visit by Prime Minister Trudeau in November 2020 to Washington D.C. For the strategy to succeed and contribute to the renewal of the Canada-U.S. partnership, an investment of time, resources and personnel would be required by both countries. The challenge for Washington will be to decipher Ottawa’s China strategy. Re-elected with a new mandate in September, a new foreign affairs minister leading Canada’s diplomatic efforts, and the Two Michaels safely back in Canada, there is a need to recalibrate the bilateral relationship Trudeau government to be clear and explicit on its China policy. Under several foreign affairs ministers, there have been pressure on the Trudeau government to articulate its position through a parliamentary Special Committee on Canada-China Relations in the 43rd Parliament, and most visibly in the policy platforms of the political parties during the latest federal election in September 2021. Initiated by former foreign affairs minister François-Phillipe Champagne, the first ‘China Framework’ sought to establish new rules of engagement with China that reflected Canadian values, interests, and principles, including human rights. Unfortunately, despite the consultations conducted to develop the framework by Global Affairs Canada, the governmental department responsible for Canada’s diplomatic and consular relations, one has yet to be released. Testifying before the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations, former foreign affairs minister Marc Garneau emphasized that Canada’s approach to China was constantly evolving. Given the complexity of the relationship, Canada will co-exist, cooperate, compete and challenge China – also known as the four “Cs” approach. He states that “China is rapidly becoming a global influence with which all countries must learn to co-exist. That means that we must recognize situations in which it is necessary to cooperate with China … it is also means we are competing with China when it comes to trade and to promoting our values. It also implies challenging China when human rights are violated, or Canadian citizens and interests are jeopardized.” As Canada’s newest foreign minister, Mélanie Joly has maintained her predecessor’s four “Cs” approach. However, despite calls for a full reset in the Canada-China bilateral relationship after the release of the two Michaels, Joly’s mandate letter from the prime minister made no explicit reference to China. However, the undertones to China were present in the mandate letter’s commitment to the development of a comprehensive Indo-Pacific strategy and to work with allies and likeminded partners to collectively respond to arbitrary detention, economic coercion, cyber threats, foreign interference in democratic processes, and human rights violations. Similarly, the United States has adopted a similar framework for its engagement with China. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken states, “Our relationship with China will be competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must be.” Moreover, Blinken emphasizes engaging with China from a position of strength will require working with allies and partners. However, the differing factor between both countries is the United States’ characterization of China as a “strategic” competitor,” which has largely guided the U.S. whole-of-government response in comparison to Canada’s four “Cs” approach and explicit inclusion of the term: “co-existence.” In November 2021, Ottawa announced its intentions to draw up an Indo-Pacific strategy that would deepen diplomatic, economic and defense partnerships and international assistance in the region. The strategy would not only include the Asia-Pacific, but also countries bordering the Indian Ocean, such as India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The decision to proceed with a more comprehensive strategy than country-specific hints at Ottawa’s attempt to align itself with other countries and regions like the United States and European Union, who are framing their interest in the region using the same terminology. In November, the EU released the EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific that outlined how Brussel would expand its influence in the region. Similarly, at the East Asia Summit in late October, the Biden administration sought to reaffirm the United States’ commitment to the Indo-Pacific region through developing an Indo-Pacific economic framework. For Canada, the absence of a clearly defined China ‘policy’ or ‘framework’ has created uncertainty and unpredictability for federal departments and agencies, provincial and municipal governments, the business community, academic institutions, and civil society organizations. As a result, as Ottawa reassess and re-evaluates its policy priorities with Beijing – so too must these other stakeholders. Although the Indo-Pacific Strategy is a positive sign, there will be high expectations for Ottawa to deliver. A forward-looking principle-based China policy will be essential in allowing Canada to navigate the complex and interconnected relationship it has with the United States and reassess and realign its ties with China. A one-dimensional approach to China will not serve Canada’s long-term economic, diplomatic, political, and security interests. It’s challenging to forecast how the balance of power will continue to shift between China and the United States. However, what is indisputable is that China will remain a central force shaping the world that will require Canada and other middle power countries to respond. The U.S. Innovation and Competition Act aligns with Biden’s emphasis to rebuild partnerships with key partners and allies to counter China’s technological rise. The legislation seeks to strengthen the Transatlantic Alliance, and enhance cooperation with countries in the Western Hemisphere, South and Central Asia, Africa, the Arctic Region, and Oceania, to effectively compete and counter China. Ambitious from the outset, the legislation underscores the importance of rebuilding and strengthening partnerships and alliances worldwide. However, for a meaningful partnership to emerge, it will also require U.S. allies and partners contribute time, energy, and resources. For the time being, the expectation within the partnership is yet to be determined as to what extent countries are willing to commit. Competing from a position of strength will require the United States to partner with its allies and partners – many of which are homes to cutting-edge research institutions in artificial intelligence, robotics, and biotechnology. Like the United States, Canada is a world leader in science, technology and innovation. According to the Conference Board of Canada’s 2021 Innovation Report Card, Canada ranks 10th, among 16 peer countries, up from 12th in 2018. With extensive research ties between Canadian and American academic and research institutions, Canada and the United States are natural partners in advancing scientific and technological research and development. Recently, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada announced their first formal partnership in June 2021, which would support research in areas of mutual interests, such as artificial intelligence and quantum. Unlike in the United States, Canadian research institutions are often cash strapped, as illustrated by the large discrepancy between American and Canadian endowments. To contextualize this, Harvard University’s endowment value is USD $41.9 billion in 2020, which is larger than the top 10 endowments of Canadian universities combined. Many Canadian research institution rely on generous governmental grants and awards. As the U.S. Congress considers massive investments into research and development (R&D) to compete with China, ensuring Canadian universities and research institutions have access to joint funding programs will be an enabling factor to the success of Canada-U.S. research efforts. Many of these Canadian universities and research institutions form part of Canada’s Innovation Superclusters Initiative. Announced in 2018, the Canadian federal government committed to investing approximately $1 billion over five years to advance research in digital technologies, plant proteins, advanced manufacturing, enhancing the use of artificial intelligence in supply chains, and oceans. Although there is emphasis in the strategic use of intellectual property (IP) to help the sectors grow, there is an opportunity to link these Canadian superclusters to R&D in the United States. The challenge will be for Canadian and American policymakers and decisionmakers to ensure that the collaborations are mutually beneficial for both countries. However, increased protectionism on intellectual property by both countries could pose a major barrier to collaborative efforts. Washington recognizes that many of its allies and partners have complex relationships with China, including partnerships with Chinese academic and research institutions that foster joint research and academic exchange of researchers, professionals, and students. Moreover, increasingly within recent years, many Canadian and American universities and research institutions have faced new challenges and risks associated with any partnership with connections to China following heightened media attention and security from the public, politicians, faculty, and alumni. To assess the risks towards Canada’s national security, Ottawa released its National Security Guidelines for Research Partnershipsto assist institutions in safeguarding research and intellectual property against foreign interference, espionage and theft. Likewise, the White House’s National Science and Technology Council released the implementation guidance for National Security Presidential Memorandum-33 in January 2022, with the same objectives to establish rules for ensuring research security and researcher responsibilities, noting that some foreign governments, such as China, are actively trying to illicitly acquire U.S. research and technologies. As Canada and the United States navigate this terrain, there is an opportunity for both countries to align their guidelines to maintain an open environment that fosters international research collaboration while protecting research security and competitiveness. Since 2020, there has been increased sensitivity and vigilance by governments and research institutions in Canada on international espionage and foreign interference targeting research, data, and technologies from research partnerships. In May 2021, the Albertan government ordered its four major universities to suspend the pursuit of partnerships with individuals or organizations with links to the Chinese government. Like many countries with research collaborations linked to China, Canadian research institutions are in the midst of re-adjusting and re-orientating their partnerships with China in sensitive areas connected to national security within the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). For Canada, it is unlikely that large-scale economic decoupling will occur with China with recognition that there are benefits in collaborating with Chinese researchers and institutions. Rather moving forward, research collaborations with China will likely be of minimal to low risk in nature in areas such a heath and the environment, posing no significant implications for Canadian national security. Although Ottawa released its national security guidelines, greater clarity is needed for Canadian universities and research institutions on how they can best navigate international research partnerships that have become intertwined with national security and economic competitiveness concerns. The administrative burden has to be shared by government and the research community. As Canadian research institutions begin to reduce their partnerships with China in sensitive fields with potential military usage, there is an opportunity for Canada and the United States to deepen cross-border cooperation in those fields given shared national security and defense commitments. However, the research partnership guidelines released by Ottawa and Washington also recognize that there are merits its research collaborations with international partners including China. As such, Canadian and American research institutions and researchers could coordinate with each other in partnering Chinese researchers and institutions to advance transnational research and development in fields of common interest, and uphold values based on transparency, integrity and reciprocity. Reinforced by shared geography, history, values, and interests, Canada and the United States are natural allies and partners to advance scientific and technological research and development. By working together, there is an opportunity for both countries to be global leaders in cutting-edge technologies that will define the 21st century and improve the well-being of citizens on both sides of the border. Despite considerable common ground, there is a fundamental difference between Canada and the United States on deepening cross border collaboration. Part of the increasing geopolitical rivalry between China and the United States is driven by techno-nationalistic ambitions by both countries. Both countries are locked in a battle for technological primacy. Domestically, the United States has doubled down on its efforts to provide more government support for research and development (R&D), bolster strategic sectors such as semi-conductors, and encourage its allies and partners to opt-out of a China-led technologically-driven world. In contrast, Canada views it slightly differently, factoring in economic competitiveness with attention to national security implications. Thus, cooperating with the United States in tech R&D will be driven mainly by economic and national security versus geopolitical interests that seek to maintain the U.S.’ position as the hegemon. This is evident in Ottawa’s reluctance to use the “Cold War-esque” language in Washington. Whether the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act passes both houses of Congress and receives presidential approval or not, Canada must be prepared to effectively engage and clearly articulate its interests with China to the United States, even if it differs from U.S. interests. The inability to do so will result in Washington dismissing Ottawa’s interests down the road. Even worse, Washington could be indifferent and non-consultative on issues that could affect Canada. Through meaningful engagement, both countries can map out areas of cooperation and conflict in effectively managing their interests vis-à-vis China. For Washington, undertaking such an exercise in developing a ‘Canada Strategy’ will be highly beneficial for American policymakers and decision-makers in understanding Canada’s position on China, which will allow for better coordination and alignment with Canada. Moreover, it will serve as an opportunity to strengthen Canada-U.S. relations and signal a real effort by Washington to improve relations. For Ottawa, Washington’s willingness to better coordinate, consult, and engage is a positive sign after years of deterioration in the Canada-U.S. relationship. The recognition by congressional leadership in a need for a ‘Canada Strategy’ exemplifies that. As the geopolitical rivalry ensues, Canada will need to ensure it does not become collateral damage, placing its short-term and long-term interests and values at the forefront. This means Ottawa will need to be highly attuned to Washington’s motivations as the dynamics between Beijing and Washington continue to evolve, and vice versa with Beijing. As Washington considers a Canada Strategy, Ottawa should take a similar approach in developing a strategy on how it will navigate an increasingly competitive world between China and the United States, finding the right approach to China and the United States that enhances and protects Canadian interests and prosperity.

Thought of Canada being the region where the sparks for World War III will be struck may not seem likely, but there is one area where a foreign foe could surprise the West: Quebec. If Quebec were to secede from Canada, two unsettling possibilities could occur. The first is that Canada could go to war with its wayward province. The second is that some power like China or Russia could build an alliance with Quebec. While such possibilities are unlikely, there are means of defense. If Quebec were to secede from Canada, there are several points that could spark a civil war between the two. The least likely would be national pride. There are several economic reasons that could provide the tinder for war. Quebec controls the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, and Quebec could use that control to wage economic war with Western Canada. In addition, Quebec possesses significant reserves of natural resources that currently contribute to the North American economy on a free basis. An independent Quebec would change that. Finally, Canada proper would become a split country, with a third of Canadian provinces being geographically separated from the Capital. In light of the fact that no state wants to be divided, and Canada already has several fluttering independence movements, the urge to prevent further dissolution will be strong. While it is true that Canada does not have a large military, and Quebec has none, it is not impossible for war to break out. The Quebec separatists have used violence before, most notably with the murder of Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte, and it would be easy for a semi-independent Quebec to buy arms on the international market. If Canada did get involved in civil war with Quebec, there are several options open to both sides if the war drags on. Canada could invoke Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which could split NATO as France has traditionally expressed support for Francophone Quebec. It is unlikely Britain would be unconcerned with a core Commonwealth state being embroiled in civil war; especially depending on how the vote for Scottish independence goes this year. The United States would be committed, as they are deeply intertwined with Canada at every level. States like Russia, China, or Iran could use the distraction of a civil war in the very center of the Anglosphere to press their boundaries with the Western Alliance. Furthermore, they could start supporting the Quebec rebels, either directly or through third party means. If the war was presaged by an internationally recognized referendum, then Russia or China could take the position that they are upholding international norms, and paint the Western states in a negative light. Attempts at arming the rebels or openly supporting them would directly threaten the fundamental security of the United States, as it would provide a foothold on the continent from which hostile states could threaten the United States. While the first scenario of a successful Quebec independence movement immediately descending into world war is unlikely, the far more dangerous one of an independent Quebec making allies with states hostile to the West is possible. An independent Quebec would have the full ability to make alliances with foreign powers, and it is unlikely they would be readily welcomed into NATO, NAFTA, or other treaties with the Western powers. Canada would put pressure on any attempts to allow Quebec a seat at the table, and European countries would be wary of admitting Quebec, as it could fuel separatist movements within their own countries. In addition, the United States would not want the possibility of Canada dissolving, even if most of the providences would likely join the United States. This method of amalgamation would be undesirable, if for no other reason than there is no guarantee that each section of Canada would join the US, and a unified Canada is better for the US than a series of states on its northern border. The dissolution of Canada could also embolden separatist movements in the United States. Given the internal danger to Western countries an independent Quebec would present, it is likely that Quebec would be forced to look for friends elsewhere. Russia and China are the most likely candidates. Both countries would be interested in the natural resources of Quebec. China and Russia would also both enjoy the prospects of helping to develop Quebec’s Arctic resources. In addition, the possibility of a military alliance with Quebec would present an opportunity not present since Alaska became part of the United States; a land connection to the United States. Right now the Anglosphere is protected by its island status, with no major hostile powers sharing a land border with any member. An independent Quebec would be courted by hostile powers to allow such a chance thought. Russia would view it as retaliation for NATO expanding into the Baltics, Poland, and developing close relations with Ukraine and Georgia. China would view it as a chance to have a mirror for the US alliances in China’s First Island Chain, with the added bonus of a large land connection to the American heartland, as opposed to the slender one that the US has against China on the Korean peninsula. The presence of a near-peer competitor with bases on the North American heartland would greatly reduce the flexibility of Western countries as they exert their influence on the world. Such a situation would be more bothersome to the United States and its allies than the Zimmerman telegram of a century ago, or the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba half a century ago. It would have the same effect as Germany’s race to rival Britain on the high seas before World War I.

In the hyper-competitive global economy, business investment in research and development (R&D) is crucial because it drives technological innovation, which is a key factor in any country’s economic prosperity and national security. Yet Canada’s levels of business R&D are far off the pace in technologically advanced, globally traded sectors of the economy.

A recent analysis paints a stark picture, revealing yawning chasms, not just between Canada and the United States but also between Canada and the size-adjusted global averages for business R&D in nine advanced sectors. In 2021, U.S. firms spent almost 103 times more than their Canadian counterparts on R&D in these sectors, despite U.S. GDP being just 11.7 times larger than Canada’s. Worse, Canada was below the global average by a factor of almost five. Such disparities should serve as a clarion call for Canada to reevaluate the R&D incentives it provides firms.

examining moral rights in the united states,” U.S. Copyright Office, April, Available Online at https://www.copyright.gov/policy/moralrights/full-report.pdf, Accessed 07-13-2024) JM

4. State Moral Rights Laws

Additional implications of a Court operating free from a norm disfavoring issue creation are easy to develop. 1 But the general point is simple: without this norm the Court would no longer resemble a legal body in the way that scholars, attorneys, and jurists—not to mention Article 111 of the U.S. Constitution—contemplate such fora. More to the point, regular deviations from this norm would undermine the Courts legitimacy. The public believes that the Court's legitimate judicial function involves resolving the issues before it, not the creation of new issues.36 As one scholar put it, "When the parties choose issues, there is little opportunity for judges to pursue their own agendas and, as a consequence, the proceedings are not only fairer, but are perceived to be fairer," But, if the Court departs from this practice, it raises questions as to the impartiality of |its| actions, and such speculation tarnishes the Courts legitimacy. Litigant control of the issues is important to satisfy not only the parties, but society as well…When the Court [discovers] issues that the litigants have not presented, the Court erodes its credibility and trespasses on the soul of the adversarial system.'7

That hasn’t, however, kept Republicans from swinging away. Biden is far and away the GOP’s No. 1 villain on Facebook, according to an analysis conducted by the Democratic-leaning communications agency Bully Pulpit Interactive for POLITICO. Over the last three months, Republicans and affiliated groups and committees have spent nearly $2.5 million trying to paint Biden and his priorities in a negative light. That’s more than three times what they’ve spent on Facebook ads targeting other leading Democrats — from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and former President Barack Obama — and issues like socialism, fake news, and “defund the police” combined. POLITICO opted to review the last three months of data, after Facebook lifted the ban on political ads on its U.S. platform. But there has not been a consistent theme to the anti-Biden spots. The attack lines getting pushed most on the right go after Biden’s massive infrastructure push, his call for raising taxes, dark money groups that support his agenda, his position on guns and the rise of gun violence in U.S. cities, according to Bully Pulpit’s analysis. The conservative outfit Americans for Prosperity is leading the online barrage against Biden, with spots on infrastructure, taxes and the American Jobs Plan. The National Rifle Association has run online ads targeting Biden on guns, claiming that the “Biden Political Machine [will] dismantle the 2nd Amendment.” But others running ads go after Biden on wholly different topics. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has run spots accusing the president of trying to pack the Supreme Court with “radical leftiest justices” (Biden has only put together a commission to study the composition of the courts).

No, it’s not. If the Obama Administration loses in the Supreme Court, the political pain will fall almost exclusively on the President and his Party. To paraphrase Colin Powell and the Pottery Barn rule, President Obama will have broken health care, so he owns it. To the vast mass of Americans who follow politics casually or not at all, Obamacare and the American system of health care have become virtually synonymous. This may not be exactly right or fair, but it’s a reasonable perception on the part of most people. The scope of the Affordable Care Act is so vast, and its effects so pervasive, that there is scarcely a corner of health care, especially with regard to insurance, that is unaffected by it. So if millions lose insurance, they will hold it against Obamacare, and against Obama. Blaming the President in these circumstances may be unfair, but it’s the way American politics works.¶ Republicans, of course, will encourage this sentiment. The precise legal claim in King v. Burwell is an esoteric one. It is not based on a claim that Obamacare is unconstitutional. (The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law three years ago.) Rather, the central assertion by the plaintiffs is that the Obama Administration violated the law itself. In any event, the subtlety of the issue at the heart of the case will surely be lost in its aftermath. The headlines will read, correctly, “Court rules against Obamacare,” and this will be all that matters. The Republicans will argue that the Supreme Court showed that the law was flawed from the start, that the Obama Administration is lawless, that a full repeal of the law is the only appropriate response to the Court’s decision—and that the millions who lose their subsides should blame the sponsor of the law. Watch for references to a “failed Presidency.” There’ll be plenty of them.¶ Understandably, perhaps, the Administration has courted this kind of reaction. Better than anyone, Administration officials know the scale of the problems that would be created by a loss in the Supreme Court. Advertising this possibility makes sense as a litigation strategy; Obama officials don’t want to make it easy for the Supreme Court to rule against them. In testimony before Congress and elsewhere, Sylvia Burwell, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (and the defendant in the case), said that the Administration has no contingency plan for an adverse ruling in the Supreme Court. But playing chicken with the Justices only works if it works. If the Supreme Court strikes down the subsidies, the Administration will also have to answer for why it didn’t prepare for this possibility.¶ For many people, the President of the United States is the government of the United States. It’s why he gets the credit and blame for so many things, like the economy, where his influence can be hard to discern. This is particularly true for a subject in which the President has invested so much of his personal and political capital. If the Supreme Court rules against him, the President can blame the Justices or the Republicans or anyone he likes, and he may even be correct. But the buck will stop with him.

To achieve that more ambitious outcome, says Gene Kimmelman, a former chief counsel to the Justice Department’s antitrust division, the government does not have to go so far as to convince the courts that their past decisions were wrong. But it would have to convince judges that those earlier precedents have to be adapted to the competitive realities of today’s winner-take-all markets — markets where customers all want to use the same network or supplier, the price of a product can be zero, and the competitive threat comes from small start-ups offering a different product or technology. Even as these cases proceed through the courts, the issues they raise will also be actively debated in Congress, where there is considerable bipartisan interest in restraining the power of Big Tech. And what happens in one forum is likely to inform and affect the other. The filing of the court cases, for example, is likely to give further impetus to legislative proposals to strengthen the antitrust laws and create a new agency to directly regulate digital platforms, much in the way the Federal Communications Commission regulates telephone and cable companies and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission regulates electric utilities. In addition to regulating business practices and approving mergers, such an agency could also address issues of privacy, data ownership and regulation of disinformation and hate speech. Just this week, both the British government and the European Union unveiled a proposal for such an agency.

While the Supreme Court may have historically been able to act as political cover for the President and/or Congress, that is not true in a world post-Bush v. Gore. The Court is seen today as a politicized body, and especially now that we are in the era of the Roberts Court, with a Chief Justice hand picked by the President and approved by the Congress, it is highly unlikely that Court action will not, at least to some extent, be blamed on and/or credited to the President and Congress. The Court can still get away with a lot more than the elected branches since people don't understand the technicalities of legal doctrine like they understand the actions of the elected branches; this is, in part, because the media does such a poor job of covering legal news. Nevertheless, it is preposterous to argue that the Court is entirely insulated from politics, and equally preposterous to argue that Bush and the Congress would not receive at least a large portion of the blame for a Court ruling that, for whatever reason, received the attention of the public.

A clash between Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Chief Justice John Roberts is igniting a partisan fight over the Supreme Court as the justices move forward with a politically-charged docket during an election year.

Schumer stepped onto a political landmine when he warned that two conservative justices would “pay the price” if they voted against abortion rights, earning a rare rebuke from Roberts who called the comments “dangerous.”

The system of mass incarceration depends entirely on the steady stream of misinformation it imposes on the humans it looks to control. If overnight everyone charged with victimless crimes exercised their constitutional rights, the shortage of judges, lawyers, and cops would be exposed right away in the handling of overflowing jury trial cases. Can we just imagine if the number of people demanding their trial rights just doubled or tripled in occurrence? It would be absolute chaos for the justice system. This immediate crisis would ‘bullet train’ mass incarcerations to the number one priority for judges and politicians. They would only be left with the option to either throw out a lot of the ‘criminal’ cases filed, for example drug possession, disobeying unjust laws, and victimless crimes. Or go with the more difficult option and try to amend the Constitution to turn the tables into their favor. Crashing the system by being informed and exercising our rights is an achievable concept. Even the dissolution of the Drug War could be commenced with this powerful tool. Sparing the destruction of innocent lives on the civilian side and senseless overreach on the police side. Leaving it to the individual to decide what to put into their own bodies without being raided, kidnapped, and locked up for a precious portion of their life.

Likewise, the Carnian pluvial episode, a smaller mass-extinction event that I’m also fond of and that occurred some 230 million years ago, was so pivotal that the scientists who study this episode describe it as “the dawn of the modern world.” For millions of years, an extremely dry climate had extended across the supercontinent of Pangaea, until an episode of massive volcanism made the planet hotter and much more humid. It rained for about a million years, perhaps in waves that matched the four eruptive peaks of the volcanism. This global wetting led to another profound disappearance of many species, particularly of herbivorous reptiles that had adapted to arid conditions. But on this newly wet planet, a dazzling diversification of more modern coral reefs, conifer trees, dinosaurs, crocodiles, insects, and mammals began. “The origin of modern systems was triggered by the crisis,” Michael Benton, a prominent researcher of this extinction and a professor at the University of Bristol, in England, told me. Extinction is often cast as a destructive force, but in this light, it is also generative. Even in the face of extinction, existing body plans—think of higher taxonomic categories such as phylum, class, or order—rarely disappear entirely. Meanwhile, the environmental changes that drive extinction events also drive the emergence of new body plans, notes the paleontologist Norman MacLeod, a professor at Nanjing University, in China. Extinction also removes the advantages of ecological incumbents—who themselves took advantage of a previous episode of rapid diversification, in many cases after an extinction event—and opens up opportunities for other groups. As a result, extinction has increased the overall range of diversity in the biosphere over time, a phenomenon known as evolutionary stacking. “All these factors underscore the creative role extinction has played in promoting biodiversity,” MacLeod told me. “If there had been no extinction over the course of Earth history, our planet would be home to a far less diverse array of species than it is.” Other than the emergence of new species, extinction is likely the most common evolutionary process on Earth. It is as necessary a part of evolution as death is of life, making space for new species—even whole new ecosystems—to emerge. And this kind of creative destruction is happening constantly: More dramatic events such as the Late Devonian fade into thousands or millions of more everyday extinction events that have made the world as we know it today. Extinction’s beneficent side puts us in an awkward, even discomforting position. The world, after all, is on the upslope of another significant extinction event. Climate change, habitat loss, pollution, and a slew of other environmental problems are radically transforming ecosystems and resulting in a loss of biodiversity unprecedented in the history of our species, according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)—the global body of researchers aiming to do for our current crisis of extinction what the IPCC does for climate change. In Earth’s history of extinctions, this one is distinct from all those previous in that it’s clearly caused by us. In the pursuit of our own interests, humans are profoundly reordering every environment on the planet, and extinguishing multitudinous lineages of organisms—the assemblage of species we live alongside. Where does this leave us? Extinction is a tragedy for the species affected, but if we are just the latest in a series of evolutionary pressures, should we then be indifferent? The answer is the intuitive one: We absolutely need to be worried about what humans are doing to the planet. But we should be worried about the transformations we’re causing and all the destruction of ecosystem services that they entail not because extinction is inherently bad, but—first and foremost—because these transformations might well destroy us. Traditional environmental thinking tends to rely on the ideal of preservation to condemn human-driven extinction: Our actions are upsetting a supposed balance of nature that would persist if not for us, so our responsibility is to uphold that balance, guarding or re-creating a version of nature that does not so obviously reveal our influence. “The ravages committed by man subvert the relations and destroy the balance which nature had established between her organized and her inorganic creations,” the diplomat George Perkins Marsh, perhaps America’s first environmentalist, wrote in his 1864 text, Man and Nature—foundational to the conservation movement. More than a century and a half later, this same conceit governs environmental thought. You can see it, for instance, in the way environmental groups and thinkers describe the initiative to reintroduce wolves to Yellowstone National Park: After human actions “ruined” the ecosystem, the wolves were able to “restore balance” by reducing the number of elk in the park. (Never mind that for at least eight years after the wolves returned, humans still killed more elk in the park than they did.) This continuously recurring notion of some harmonious stability ignores the reality of nature’s constant dynamic flux. In trying to preserve an imagined natural balance, many conservationists assume that the current way the world is organized, with its current assemblage of species, is the way that it must always be. Evolution itself disproves that assumption: It has no purpose or direction, and does not end once a given condition is achieved. And any attempt to restore that imagined world in balance has involved making judgments, implicit or explicit, about which species are most worth saving. Beyond the self-interest of maintaining ecosystem services that benefit us, humans can and do have good reasons for trying to save polar bears, pandas, whales, tigers, sea turtles, rhinoceroses, orangutans, penguins, and other charismatic species from disappearing, but those decisions rely on human moral preferences. We have also deliberately eradicated the virus that causes smallpox, and if you accept that as a triumph or protest that those are just microbes, then you accept that not all species have an equal right to existence: that whales and orangutans—and people—are more important than bacteria and viruses. In many ways, fidelity to the idea that humans upset nature’s balance holds us back from addressing the perils of extinction. The conservation biologist Mark Vellend worries, for instance, that counts of biological diversity disregard new species in novel, human-influenced ecosystems—where extant species occur in new combinations or abundances. He gives the example of New Zealand. Since humans arrived, some three-quarters of that country’s forest has been converted for their use, a sizable chunk of all endemic birds have gone extinct, and non-native species have multiplied. But in that same period, he says, the number of plant species has doubled, the number of bird species overall has stayed roughly the same, and dozens of land mammals have moved in where none had lived. So is New Zealand an example of a biodiversity crisis, or a biodiversity success? Vellend and others stress that this doesn’t mean global biodiversity is doing fine. Rather, it indicates that the erroneous belief that evolution follows a particular direction may be skewing our assessment. And if we do want to maintain, more or less, the current global assemblage of species—the assemblage to which we humans are adapted—then scientists need to be able to measure it accurately.