When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, building on his presence at the historic Paris Conclave a few weeks ago (which saved the world) and presenting at the Davos summit this week (which will merely improve our rescued world), offered this rhetorical crackerjack: “My predecessor wanted you to know Canada for its resources. I want you to know Canadians for our resourcefulness.” (The Trudeau years are going to be great for the T-shirt and bumper-sticker scribes.)

So, does having great natural resources mean we do not need to use our powers of ingenuity, inventiveness and creativity in the development of those resources? No, the possession of natural resources does not contradict or suspend, as Trudeau’s semantic maneuvering would have it, the powers of resourcefulness in the people – engineers, farmers, loggers, miners, fishermen and oil workers — who exploit those resources.

Minerals do not just pop out of the ground on a wish, refine themselves and then walk to the nearest subsidized GM plant in southern Ontario. And — surprise, surprise — even windmills do not collect their own materials and build themselves. All require the resourcefulness of the people working in that particular industry.

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