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The foreign market affects consumers because it takes jobs away from our economy. Companies, instead of creating domestic jobs, are going to countries like China for labour.

To know what's wrong, thus what changes we have to make, we have to go all the way back to the 1950's, just after WW2 ended. Suddenly, all of the money that was going into financing the war went into financing peace-time entrepreneurial activity. For example, TV's became economically feasible for more people to purchase, cars became sleeker and more reliable, there were tons of North American inventions, which were all manufactured in North America. We had very little unemployment during this time in which we were building things for ourselves. Houses started popping up all over the place during the 50's and 60's, and it's was everyone's god given right to own a washing machine, car, TV, and so on.

People started getting raises every year though, and the people who ran big business in North America agreed to their worker's pay increases since they were making enough money themselves to pay for it. In the 1970's, Canada and the U.S. experienced a lot of inflation. Workers asked for raises because of an increase in the cost of living, higher wages gave people more spending money, and consumers bid the prices of goods/services up because of the buying sprees they went on. An inflationary spiral was born! But this made the goods produced in North America too expensive relative to the goods in other countries since our labour costs were so high, and this whole process filtered through the manufacturing system, including the technology sector.

We reached a point then where it became expensive for businesses to manufacture their stuff in Canada and the U.S. So, businesses decided to pull production out of Canada and the U.S. and hand it to other countries where manufacturing costs were cheaper, in order to gain a competitive edge. This was a good business decision and it didn't hurt company executives, but our unemployment rate subsequently rose. If our country finds that unemployment is becoming too omnipresent, low-end manufacturing jobs may be required to reduce the unemployment rate of low-level workers. Should this occur...

We would like to see a government program or system that encourages consumers to purchase domestically-made goods, as well as North American goods. If every individual tried to buy domestic goods when they could (as well as some North American goods), we would put our labour force back to work, and there would be many more jobs for younger people and the unemployed, rather than the McJobs we have now. This would be greatly beneficial for the technology sector because of the such heavy competition from companies in countries like China.

I believe a campaign to encourage domestic consumption would be an effective way to restore and encourage the creation of manufacturing jobs in our economy. As well, this campaign could encourage the consumption from domestic companies who do not export their R&D labour.

In Canada, Canadian companies in the technology sector are not very competitive globally with other technology companies. Japan has Nintendo and Sony, the United States has Microsoft, GE and Apple, but Canada does not have large technology companies that make it competitive globally in the technology sector. Though Canada is the recipient of a lot of the exported labour from U.S. technology companies, like Microsoft Canada for example, there are few large market-cap Canadian-based corporations.

Encouraging entrepreneurship in Canada, I think, would encourage Canadians to build their own companies, increasing economic activity in the technological sector in Canada. When Canadian companies in the technology sector produce their items in Canada (per my first suggestion), they would be especially beneficial for the Canadian economy.

Historically, the focus of the education system is to encourage students to get degrees and get out in the workforce and get good jobs, but there are not a lot of good jobs out there in the technological sector in Canada so the focus has to change towards entrepreneurship. When I say that schools have to change to focus more on entrepreneurship, I mean...

Let's take programming software applications for computers, as an example. Why shouldn't the school system look not only for students who are capable of programming, but students who are capable and ambitious, and teach these students not only how to program, but how to open up a software business? If, from the start, Canadians were encouraged to open their own businesses and create innovative applications for technology instead of working for large corporations, Canada would be much more competitive globally in the technology sector.

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