I wrote this article a couple of years ago and it was published in Studies in Political Economy. The article came out of a conference presentation I made at conference in Ottawa on Canada’s Development Model: Beyond Extraction which was co-organized by MiningWatch and Studies in Political Economy. A PDF of the slides I used during the presentation can be found here and the audio can be found here (23 min mark). My sense of it was that Bob Lovelace’s presentation was one of the most powerful presentations that I have seen to date.
Abstract
This article discusses several aspects of the reliance in the Canadian economy on the natural resource extraction (NRE) industries. The NRE sector illustrates the dual nature of Canadian capital in a global context. The intensification of resource extraction is associated with an increase in inequality along several vectors. These increases in inequality, however, cannot be decoupled from the institutionalization of neoliberal policies at both the federal and provincial levels over the last 30 years.
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