Back in the middle of the 18th century, the Scots, who had already invented numerous beneficial things, concepts and processes, where poised on the edge of remarkable developments which later came to be called the Scottish Enlightenment. The centre of this world-changing activity, the hot spot, was Glasgow where Glaswegians, as they called themselves, were being transformed from canny merchants to tremendously rich tobacco Lords. Glasgow was a favoured port. It jutted out into the Atlantic which gave Glaswegian ships a shorter route to the tobacco plantations of the Americas. Glaswegian ships regularly shaved two or three weeks off the voyage times of ships sailing from London or Bristol. Faster voyages meant richer returns for the Glaswegian tobacco lords. Glasgow rapidly became pre-eminent in education, the arts, architecture, book publishing and a wide range of other activities.
Tobacco, the sinful stuff, made all this development possible. Present governments, firmly opposed to tobacco addicts, gain huge incomes from tobacco taxes. Having realized long ago that any activity that the strait-laced can call sin can be taxed, they also gain rich revenues from the liquor trade and other activities deemed to be against biblical moral standards.
The Glasgow Phenomena prompted Adam Smith, also a Scot, to write The Wealth of Nations, which is still on university reading lists. The core of Smith's economic philosophy is that the desire of individuals to better their own conditions is so strong that it can make all of society more wealthy and powerful while, at the same time, "surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations."
The wealthy Glaswegians were Whigs, forerunners of the Liberals (a word voiced with distaste by many Westerners who favour the Conservatives, descendants of Scotland's feudal, land-owning Tories.) The chief economic virtue of the Glaswegians was their ability to amass a huge pool of capital, a critical mass which fuelled continuing economic development.
The ghosts of 18th century Glasgow are recent manifestations in Saskatoon. That city, buoyed up by the Canadian Light Source Synchrotron, the ancient storehouse of underground wealth and controlled by a gung-ho council, is as ebullient as Glasgow was two and one-half centuries ago. It is not just in competition with nearby urban centres; it is in competition internationally.
Global investors, previously reluctant to do business in what they considered to be a confiscatory, socialistic, union-loving province, are now making Saskatchewan their new bonanza. The Big-Brother-Knows-Best model of government may have ended or it may be returning with a Tory flavour. Every time something is dug up or pumped up and profitably used or exported, the wealth of the underground storehouse is diminished.
Someday the storehouse will be empty or, which seems more likely, will contain little of valued for emerging, environmentally-friendly technologies.
The resource-rich provinces need to develop a philosophy of "what to do then."
The society of the future needs to be economically and environmentally sustainable. Wages must be fair, working conditions safe, benefits generous and retirement incomes adequate.
In old Glasgow, wealth was retained in the city for the benefit of the city - and country. How much of the resource wealth of Saskatchewan is being short-circuited to numbered bank accounts in accommodating countries throughout the world? How much is going into the war-chests of companies intending to develop competing industries elsewhere? Does anybody know? If they do, will they ever tell us?
