Mel Watkins died on Thursday on the day when his vision of the value of economic nationalist hit home with Trump's threat to cut off the supply of Personal Protective Equipment, which is needed to protect healthcare workers and others, to other countries, including Canada. Once again Canadian interests came last. Of course everyone remembers him as co-author of the Waffle Manifesto. Watkins also played a significant role in addressing indigenous and environmental issues with his book Dene Nation: The Colony Within while working on indigenous issues in the Northwest Territory and in examining the threat presented by the proposed Mackenzie River pipeline.
My own interest in developing a more nationalist approach that still retained an internationalist vision was sparked by another leader in this area, Robin Mathews, while I was attending Carleton University. He demanded to know why there were so few Canadian born professors and so many Americans and British profs, who not coincidentally gave virtually not attention to Canadian issues, citing the incestuous example of one department with 12 of 13 faculty members coming from the University of Indiana.
Rabble has an excellent reivew of Watkin's life's work at https://rabble.ca/news/2020/04/remembering-political-economist-mel-watkins
