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"Present at the creation - Policy Options, 25 years on" by Tom Kent A quarter century after the creation of this magazine, our founding editor looks back and examines the ideas that dominated, and the authors who contributed to, the public policy debates of the first half of the 1980s, many of which resonate to this day. "Politics since 1980: a little humility would have gone a long way" by Hugh Segal Looking back at the political landscape of the last 25 years, IRPP President Hugh Segal finds it marked by a striking lack of humility among leaders. “We have often since 1980,” he writes, “confused popularity with success and humility with failure.” The fall of the Clark government in 1979 and its defeat in the 1980 election was entirely due to Joe Clark’s hubris in managing the House of Commons, and facilitated the return of Pierre Trudeau to office and eventually the rise of Brian Mulroney as his replacement. From that one seminal event, marked by a lack of humility, the political fates of the next quarter-century were arranged. Where leaders succeeded, they usually demonstrated humility; where they failed, it was out of arrogance. "The left: from hope to sneers in only 25 years" by Robin V. Sears Twenty-five years ago, the left in Canada was at the height of its influence. Under Ed Broadbent’s leadership, the NDP had a national agenda of hope and social justice for ordinary Canadians. It also had a sense of humour. Today, it has traded in hope for an agenda crowded with fear-mongering, from anti-Americanism to the apocalyptic Star Wars version of missile defence. In the last four elections, the voters have asked what’s in it for them, and hearing nothing, voted Liberal. How did the left lose its way in the last 25 years, and how can it rediscover the politics of hope in the next 25 years? Robin Sears, a former NDP campaign director during the Broadbent years, offers this searing assessment of where the left went wrong. "The right: on the outside looking in" by William Watson While the right was in the ascendancy with the rise of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States 25 years ago, it has never really achieved a similar revolution of expectations, or governance, in Canada. Even the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney was unable to attack the disease of deficit spending and increases to the national debt. While the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement was undoubtedly the most significant economic achievement of the last quarter century, it has not been echoed by similar reforms to social policy. Our former editor looks back and explains why the right in Canada remains very much a work in progress, on the outside of power, looking in. "Finishing what we started: Canadian trade and economic policy 25 years backward and forward" by Michael Hart and Bill Dymond In examining Canadian trade and economic policy over the last 25 years, the authors note the shambles of fiscal policy, under which the federal debt grew by 1,100 percent during the Trudeau years. The 1985 Macdonald Commission provided a toolkit of ideas for changing Canada’s course. Not only did it recommend the “leap of faith” of free trade with the United States, “but its impact would not have been as positive if it had not been for a series of complementary policies, from regulatory reform to privatization and from the GST to monetary policy.” The Chrétien government held to the continental free trade course set by the Mulroney government, and attacked the deficit beginning with the 1995 budget, resulting in balanced budgets and the strongest economic growth in the G7 since 1997. Looking ahead to the next 25 years, the authors suggest that for all the challenges of the global context, Canadians would do well “to come to grips with what it means to be part of a deeply integrated North American economy.” "Productivity and innovation in Canada: a case of governance failure" by Gilles Paquet While there is broad agreement on the benefits of productivity growth and innovation, Canada has not done very well on these fronts, trailing behind all its major trading partners. This, says Gilles Paquet, has to do with the fact that Canada is a risk-averse society “plagued by social rigidities that prevent it from adapting to the evolving context.” Despite efforts to put these issues on the public agenda, Canadians have remained largely unconcerned, due to three mental blocks: the very little knowledge we have about the sources and causes of productivity gains and innovation, the growing anti-economic-growth sentiment, and the lack of leadership of public officials in educating individuals about their central importance. Paquet reviews the steps that Canada has to take in order to rise to the challenge of innovation and productivity and capture the accruing benefits: “This will entail a major reframing of Canadian perspectives, much restructuring and a fair bit of retooling,” he says. "'E-the-people': reflections on citizen power in the information era" by Thomas J. Courchene The Internet revolution has empowered citizens as “e-the-people.” Never before in history have so many consumer choices and so much information been available to citizens. If knowledge is power, gone are the days, says Tom Courchene, “when governments had a virtual monopoly on information and, therefore, power.” Where “transmitters” have traditionally determined “the nature of information flows,” it is “increasingly the ‘receptors’ who are calling the shots.” And in Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been a transformational experience, not only empowering individuals and interest groups, but leading Canadians to “overwhelmingly embrace[d] the Charter... for many it became the centrepiece of their Canadianism.” "The public service: the glue is coming unstuck" by Donald J. Savoie The last 25 years have seen a breaking of the bargain between the public service and its political masters. Where senior officials were once alone on the dance floor with their ministers, it is now “crowded with new actors,” writes Donald Savoie: “lobbyists, interest and advocacy groups, think tanks, research institutes, policy consultants.” Not to mention the media, “elbowing their way onto the dance floor” through access to information legislation. It’s a very different time, and a very different dance, one in which public servants “no longer control their work environment to anything like the extent they did 25 years ago.” "The arts and culture as new engines of economic and social development" by Simon Brault In Canada and elsewhere in the world the arts and culture have moved away from a position of marginality to being at the core of new economic development strategies. The vice-chair of the Canada Council of the Arts, Simon Brault, traces this evolution and notes that Canada has greatly increased its support of cultural industries, whose economic spin-offs are estimated to be $26 billion. In spite of this, he writes, Canada is moving timidly in this field. We are still locked in a restrictive mode that is preventing us from taking full advantage of the potential of the arts and culture, which are incredible vectors of creativity, the principal driver of economic and social growth. He recommends a new cultural approach that will allow us to make “imaginative and promising links between education and culture, between health and culture, between citizenship and culture, between economic development and culture.” "Denatality, aging and migration: the challenges of changing demographics" by Jacques Henripin "A population is a living entity that is constantly changing," writes Jacques Henripin. And over the past quarter century the demographics of the Canadian population has undeniably changed in composition, reproduction, age distribution, and social organization. Professor Henripin cuts a broad swath through the most notable demographic features of the past twenty-five years and what is coming up in the next fifty years. The aging of the population, he notes, is undoubtedly the most important trend: even a return to a birth rate of 2.1 children per woman would only slow down the population aging process. “In twenty years we will be living in a different world,” says Henripin. In this context, children will take on a whole new value, and our decisions with respect to labour force participation, family and immigration will be crucial in terms of how well we adjust to this new demographic era. "The environment: from local to global in a cosmic blink of 25 years" by Elizabeth May In a cosmic blink of 25 years, writes Elizabeth May, environmental issues have moved from local, to regional, to global status. Air pollution in cities was considered a local issue in 1980, but acid rain quickly became a regional issue in North America, and by 1990 global warming was a clear and present danger to the entire world. May, who has been on the front lines of all the environmental debates of the last 25 years, reviews the achievements and disappointments of the last quarter century, and suggests the Kyoto emissions targets are only a beginning in addressing the urgent issue of global warming. "Back to the future: global security from 1980 to 2030" by Janice Gross Stein From the Cold War to the war on terror, the global security agenda of today is very different from the one of 25 years ago, and is likely to be even more complex and challenging 25 years from now. “It is not only the nature of war that is changing,” writes Janice Gross Stein, “[i]ts protagonists are changing as well. Science and technology are already privileging miniaturization, the diffusion of technology and the diffusion of power from states to other kinds of players.” The fundamental form of social organization, she adds, is evolving from hierarchies to networks. Some of these are benign, while others — such as networks of terror — are malignant. If Canada is to play a role with the United States in managing the new security architecture, she concludes, “it must enhance its capacity to partner with the private sector, the voluntary sector, and centres of excellence to enrich its knowledge base and its capacity to provide security. Partnering will not succeed unless government relinquishes some control.” "Equality of opportunity and inequality across the generations: challenges ahead" by Miles Corak Equality of opportunity is one of the grand principles on which the contemporary welfare state was built. In this article, Miles Corak looks at Canada’s track record with respect to intergenerational mobility, and concludes that among the wealthy countries it is one of the most successful in this regard : even though one-third of children from low-income families become low-income adults, the benefit transmitted by high-income parents to their children is somewhat low compared with other countries, mostly because we have implemented progressive labour and education policies. But the past is no guarantee for the future, warns Corak. how Canada rises to two big challenges — access to post-secondary studies and the socio-economic integration of immigrants — will determine if the next generation has the same opportunities as the preceding one. If Canadians want to continue to promote equality of opportunity, he concludes, we have to better understand the nonfinancial barriers to post-secondary education; to focus our interventions on the family; and to invest earlier in the lives of children. "Plus ça change...intergovernmental relations then and now" by Richard Simeon The shape and discussion of federal-provincial relations in 2005 bears more than a passing resemblance to the development of intergovermental relations in the 1960s. The current discussions over asymmetrical federalism, the debate over shared-cost programs and the constitutional issues raised by the federal spending power in provincial jurisdiction are not new events in the life of the federation. “The preoccupations of the present find echoes in the past,” writes Richard Simeon, one of Canada’s eminent authorities on federal-provincial relations. "The challenge of diversity in Canada and Quebec" by Micheline Labelle Over the 1970s and 1980s, Canada and Quebec used several judicial, institutional and political mechanisms for promoting diversity and combating discrimination. Micheline Labelle, a specialist in immigration and citizenship issues, surveys the way they accommodated the various manifestations of diversity, and the challenges that still confront them in terms of inequalities and the integration of new immigrants, especially the issue of recognition of degrees, and the financing of and access to settlement services and representation in the public sphere. She also focuses on the evolution of the political climate in Canada and elsewhere: the openness observed in the 1980s was followed by a conservative political climate during the following decade, a trend that was amplified by the post-September 11 international context, she notes. |
