Struggling automakers ponder how the Asian car companies stole their customers. Call-centre staff whose jobs moved to India wonder if it's just about the wages.
And in the tech sector, admiring glances are often cast at the Celtic Tiger, the remarkable transformation that took Ireland from a rusty backwater to a high-tech powerhouse over the last 20 years.
The prestigious Canada West Foundation has effectively anointed the Celtic Tiger as its animal of choice, at least for the provinces of Western Canada.
In a recently issued report, More Than Just Lucky Shamrocks: The Re-Invention of Ireland and Lessons for Western Canada, the once sleepy Emerald Isle is hailed as "among the leaders in the fiercely competitive global economy."
Author Todd Hirsch, by day a senior economist at ATB Financial, is the first to say that Western Canada cannot simply replicate the Irish experience.
But, he writes, there are several themes and principles that can be noticed within the Irish experience, "and it is within these themes that Western Canada has much to learn."
It's not too far-fetched to suggest these lessons apply equally well to all of Canada. Hirsch agrees, while noting that every region would look a little different.
He lambastes past Irish governments for leading the country into a mire of debt.
By 1985, the country's annual deficit had reached 11 percent of its gross domestic product. With the election of the Fianna Fail government in 1987, Ireland began a "radical and painful correction in the national finances" that saw government spending cuts and reductions in corporate and personal taxes.
Commenting on the Canadian government's austere Nov. 19 Throne Speech, Hirsch says he supports the line-by-line review of government spending, because "it's prudent symbolically and in a practical sense, it's sending a message."
Still, Canada 2008 is not Ireland 1987. A key difference is that Irish labour unions participated in the belt-tightening, accepting, as Hirsch puts it, "wage restraint in exchange for more policy influence and cuts to personal income taxes."
We're not likely to see such munificence in Canada. In fact, Canadian Auto Workers president Ken Lewenza has reacted to suggestions of wage or benefit concessions with fighting words: "Our workers have already paid their share, they've already made their sacrifices."
On a brighter note, Hirsch makes much of the fact that the Irish government has made investment in human capital a priority. He cites their free high school and technical education system, as well as the establishment of Science Foundation Ireland, modelled on the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Hirsch also says fears that Ireland would simply be educating people who would move elsewhere were unfounded, as the country became a trendy, desirable place to live.
In terms of what Canada could do to make its population smarter, he proposes a graduated level of tuition remissions for post-secondary students, because, "if you just made it free, people would tend to overuse it."
He proposes that a certain percentage of education costs be reimbursed each year, with the full amount paid back to the student upon successful completion.
Hirsch also makes the somewhat heretical suggestion that governments should indeed be picking winners, in terms of targeting specific industries then trying to attract the very best companies in them and providing the right business conditions for them to flourish.
He says this is how Ireland attracted its plum industries: High-tech software, pharmaceuticals and electronics. For Western Canada today, he would pick alternative energy, ag-biotech and advances in health-care research.
He stops short of supporting direct government ownership of emerging businesses, something the Alberta government flirted with in the 1980s, but advocates a fairly activist role in company attraction.
Of course, even Ireland is not immune to the global economic crisis. Its economy is starting to shrink, and taxes are rising. Hirsch acknowledges that it's somewhat ironic that Ireland's economy has the distinction of being the very first European country likely to enter recession. He attributes this to factors such as their real estate bubble, which sent the country reeling, but has now burst.
I can confirm that personally. A few years ago, I pointed to a modest Dublin rowhouse and asked a friend what it was worth. "A million Euros" was the reply. You can probably get it for a lot less now.
And maybe you should snap it up, because, in Hirsch's view, Ireland's economic fall from grace will be temporary.
He argues that the fundamentals of smart people, a big market on its doorstep and good government policy will help that country be one of the first to recover when things turn around.
And he has high hopes that Canada, with many of the same success factors, will be right up there as well.
"The lesson from Ireland," he says, is that it is possible to reinvent your economy."
(Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)
