Volume 26 Number 1
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SPECIAL ISSUE
Towards a Post-Staples Future?
New Products and New Directions in Canada’s Resource Industries
Guest Editors: Michael Howlett and Keith Brownsey
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Introduction: Towards a Post-Staples State?
Michael Howlett and Keith Brownsey
No longer tied exclusively to the original staples industries, Canada has become an advanced economy but one which remains different from the typical model of advanced manufacturing and services found in Europe, the US and Japan. The base of the Canadian economy retains its roots in early staples industries but with many new activities grafted into, and onto, those traditional sectors (Watkins 1997). This transformation of the old staples political economy has ushered in some elements of a new political and social order at the same time that it has exacerbated or worsened many elements of the old (Clarkson 2001).
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Contours of the Post-Staples State: The Reconstruction of Political Economy and Social Identity in 21st Century Canada
Thomas A. Hutton
Abstract
In this essay I will be advancing an argument that the national development trajectory is in transition from a “mature staples” phase to a “post-staples” era, signifying not only a new phase of industrial restructuring, but also profound shifts in social development and the structures and operations of the state. This emergent development trajectory is shaped by a mélange of influences which includes new rounds of industrial restructuring, the repositioning of cities and settlements within the Canadian urban hierarchy and (more decisively) international networks, and influential social movements (including multiculturalism and environmentalism). My notion o