reading open veins of latin america

I recently began reading  Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano. It covers the history of Latin America, focussing particularly on how the resources in Latin America were systemically exported to Great Britain and then later, the United States leaving Latin America broken and drained. Many countries discussed in the book such as Brazil and Argentina were very rich countries until the free market reduced them.

What really strikes me as important in this regard is the way Canada is allowing itself to be put down the same path. Great Britian, and the United States both became the industrial power houses that they are/were through the use of economic protectionism. They protected their own economies from the free market until they were strong enough to dominate it. Canada has to ensure the resources that are extracted from her land is reinvested into a new economic type so that it is not left as a husk when all the insides are sucked out.

One possible strategy would be to invest in becoming the global leader in green and nuclear technologies. By investing now, we could build a sustainable economy built around production and knowledge, and not built solely on resource extraction.

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