Greener Grass

In 1926, the great Harold Adams Innis asked a question: What are the very long-run factors in the integration of the Canadian nation? His answer was a most original contribution to political economy: the staple thesis. Innis argued that the exploitation of certain products — fish, fur, timber, and wheat — had set the pace and direction of our economic growth and created a nation that was oriented on an east-west axis. Canada “emerged not in spite of geography but because of it,” he famously claimed.

While the economy is much more complex and diversified than it was in Innis’s time, staple products continue to make a significant contribution to our GDP, and recently a new cash crop has appeared on the scene. Indeed, marijuana may well be the fish, fur, timber, or wheat of the future. Certainly, Canada has several comparative advantages when it comes to pot: vast tracts of arable land, favourable government policies, a culture of tolerance. There’s also a fourth...