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"Meeting the challenge of globalization: sharpening the Canadian focus" by Derek H. Burney In a keynote address Canada’s former ambassador to Washington suggests “embracing globalization means giving Canadians the best chance to prosper in a globalized world.” But he says Canada needs a sharper policy focus and a greater commitment to public policy by the private sector as well as government. "Canada's competitive challenges in a global value chain" interview with Red Wilson The Competition Policy Review Panel will hold hearings across Canada early in 2008. The panel’s Chair, L.R. Wilson, is one of Canada’s most experienced business leaders. Former chairman of BCE and Nortel, and currently chairman of CAE, he sat down with Policy Options Editor L. Ian MacDonald in Montreal on November 8. "Une feuille de route pour le Canada" by Alain Dubuc The Canadian Priorities Agenda was launched in January 2006, when the IRPP assembled a panel of experts to identify the major policy challenges Canada was facing over the medium term. The CPA wrapped up this fall with the publication of A Canadian Priorities Agenda: Policy Choices to Improve Economic and Social Well-Being, a collection of studies on each of the main priorities. The book also includes the deliberations of the six judges who had to decide which of the 24 policy options proposed by the experts were most likely to enhance the economic and social wellbeing of Canadians. Alain Dubuc, columnist for La Presse, was one of them. Here are his recommendations, which include increasing productivity through innovation and reduced tax on capital, lowering carbon emissions, decreasing high-school dropout rates and focusing on early childhood development through programs aimed at children at-risk. "Alberta's new official sport" by Todd Hirsch [summary not available] "The mood of Canada: a country moving in the right direction" by Nik Nanos In our inaugural year-end poll, The Mood of Canada, Nik Nanos took the temperature of Canadians at the end of 2007, and found them in a very good mood. Two-thirds of Canadians believe the country is moving in the right direction. Canadians think they’re better off financially than they were a year ago. They’re confident about the country’s economic prospects going forward into 2008 and believe Canada’s reputation around the world is improving. Finally, they give the Harper government good marks on its performance. Here’s Nik on the numbers, and what they mean. "Harper's challenge: channelling prosperity and optimism into votes" by Robin V. Sears We asked Contributing Writer Robin Sears to analyze the Nanos Poll, The Mood of Canada, from his perspective as a one-time political hand. As former national campaign director of the NDP, he can read his way down the field as well as anyone. What he sees here is that prosperity translates into two-thirds of Canadians saying the country is on the right track, with clear optimism that the economy will continue to improve. The problem for Stephen Harper is translating that into votes, in an era when governments don’t receive as much credit for good times as they once did. "From the road back to the road ahead" by Hugh Segal Stephen Harper has been prime minister for less than two years but as Conservative Senator Hugh Segal writes, he occupies so much space, and comes under such intense media scrutiny, that it seems he’s been in office much longer. In this article, adapted from the new trade paperback edition of his book, The Long Road Back, Segal reflects on the fortunes of the Harper government and its prospects for continued survival in the minority House in 2008, as well as its ambitions to graduate to majority status in the next election. "Democracy viewed from the ground: the future is still at the doorstep" by Graham Fox It’s one thing to write position papers and policy analyses, as Graham Fox has done as vice-president of the Public Policy Forum in Ottawa, and quite another to knock on doors as a political candidate, as he discovered while running unsuccessfully for the Progressive Conservatives in the October 10 Ontario election. For all his retail efforts, he also discovered a local candidate can be swamped by a dominant issue, as this election was by the voters’ sweeping rejection of John Tory’s proposal for public funding of private faith-based schools. For all that, he says, it was a great learning experience. The future of democracy, he writes, is still at the doorstep. Fox's loss is very much our gain. With this article, he joins our masthead as one of our Contributing Writers. "The daycare campaign revisited: from baby steps to beer and popcorn" by Dianne Rinehart It was strange enough to see male politicians from Canada’s top three parties duking it out over which had a better plan for bringing up baby the during the last federal election campaign. But stranger, still, was the media’s inability to sift reality from rhetoric on the Tory’s marquee child care platform — until after the votes were counted — despite a readily available cacophony of critical voices and studies from daycare advocates and big business alike. Here journalist Dianne Rinehart takes a look at how — and why — the media dropped “baby” during the campaign, and why daycare advocates say it was a crying shame. "Campaign for the White House 2008: a search for a new middle ground" by Gil Troy In a country supposedly polarized between Republican red states and Democratic blue states, the leading presidential candidates of both parties are conducting a search for a new American middle ground. From Democratic frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to leading Republicans Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, all are resisting being typecast as too far left or too far right. No one wants to be a polarizing figure. Everyone is groping his or her way to some new and as yet undefined centre of American political gravity. As a presidential election year opens, we asked presidential scholar Gil Troy of McGill University for a sense of America’s mood. He writes of a country seeking consensus after the divisions of the Bush years. "Climate change: actions, not targets" by Chris Green As the Harper government searches for an effective climate policy it should focus on actions, not targets. Avoiding commitments to greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets should apply not only to the government’s domestic agenda, but to the position Canada takes at international gatherings such as the one to be held in Bali to consider post-Kyoto targets. Chris Green of McGill University explains why commitments to emission reduction targets are not credible and stand in the way of the energy technology revolution/race needed to stabilize the climate. He also explains why global carbon dioxide emissions have tripled since 2000, relative to the 1990s, and sets out actions that Canada could take to slow, then begin to reduce, its emissions. "Canada as an energy superpower: how clean, how powerful, how super?" by Mike Cleland Canada has laid claim to being an emerging clean energy superpower. Can this claim be sustained? The notion of power has several attributes that can be used to assess Canada’s circumstances and whether we can substantiate our claim. While the country has many capabilities with respect to energy resources and our capacity to deliver them to markets, we are less obviously well endowed on items such as technology, institutional strengths, and leverage to use our energy strengths in pursuit of broader geopolitical interests. Canada can, however, be a voice in support of market-based approaches to energy and an open international trade and investment regime, but glaring gaps need to be addressed, including the lack of an energy policy at the national level. "Managing Canada's infrastructure gap" by Guy Félio Anyone who follows the infrastructure file has heard about the infrastructure gap. Since the early 1980s, many have attempted to quantify its magnitude. The debate over the infrastructure gap (deficit, debt) can very simplistically be boiled down to one question: do we have the quantity and quality of infrastructure required to provide the level of service Canadians are willing to pay for? The trend in forwardlooking municipalities is no longer to try to fill their infrastructure gap: the idea is to stop digging so that the hole doesn’t become any deeper. Then, the time will come to start filling the hole. The new paradigm, therefore, is to manage the gap. "Cities in Canadian federalism" by Enid Slack and Richard M. Bird “Canada’s large cities are nice places to live,” write Enid Slack and Richard M. Bird of the University of Toronto’s Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance. Our cities still do remarkably well in international surveys, but these good times may not last: they warn that the substantial infrastructure deficit is draining Canadian cities’ competitive advantage. The issue, they say, is not so much a fiscal one, as cities have not run deficits and have not borrowed heavily. Rather, what is at stake is the ability of municipalities to provide the services that people want at reasonable tax rates. They review how the federal, provincial and municipal governments can change the situation: what cities need, they say, is access to revenue sources for which they themselves are responsible and accountable. "When perpetuity doesn't mean forever: the approaching demise of NORAD" by Bernard J. Brister The renewal of the NORAD Agreement in perpetuity in May 2006 seemed to lend new strength to what had appeared to be a weakening binational military security relationship. Notwithstanding this impression, however, both the Canadian and American publics and their governments are more inclined to revert to the bilateral roots of the relationship in terms of developments in the structure and mechanisms that are to address evolving threats to the North American continent. They appear content to allow the former centrepiece of the military security relationship to wither on the vine or simply occupy a minor role in the security infrastructure. This role, in addition to being minor, is likely to be one that is subservient to organizations just recently developed or indeed still in the process of development. "Inuit and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement: supporting Canada's Arctic sovereignty" by Terry Fenge Although the ice-strengthened navy patrol vessels to be deployed from Ikpiarjuk on Baffin Island are an important component of Canada's Arctic sovereignty strategy, there is more than one way to skin a cat, says Terry Fenge, formerly with the Inuit Circumpolar Conference Canada. The federal government should involve the Inuit in Canada's Arctic sovereignty, as supported by provisions in the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement dealing with monitoring and offshore management, he says. Yet, these have not been implemented, and Ottawa seems to have forfeited the opportunity to use them to shore up sovereignty. “[E]ngaging the region’s Inuit with a view to jointly ensuring that the obligations, duties, and objectives of the Nunavut, Inuvialuit, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut Land Claims Agreement are fulfilled,” he says, is key to the Integrated Northern Strategy, promised in the recent Throne Speech. "L'effet mère patrie : l'élection présidentielle française dans la presse québécoise et canadienne" by Denis Monière Does Canada’s linguistic duality translate into different information being conveyed by the English and French media? Denis Monière, an expert on ideologies in Quebec and political communication, analyzes the coverage of the recent presidential campaign in France by four dailies in Quebec and Canada and compares it with the same papers’ coverage of the British general election in the spring of 2005. He concludes that the motherland continues to exert influence over both English- and French-speaking media. The 2007 coverage in both languages was much more extensive than in 2002, which can be explained by the fact that this election “opposed newcomers who promised a renewed political scene in France.” He maintains that on the whole, however, “La Francophonie does not generate much interest in the media.” "The BNA Act and the Charter: two mints in one" by L. Ian MacDonald In this concluding instalment of our year-long series, The Charter @ 25, Policy Options’ Editor reflects on Canada’s twin constitutional traditions, the one handed down from the British North America Act, 1867, with its emphasis on the division of powers, and the newer one from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982, with its emphasis on the rights of citizens. Taken together, they are two mints in one. Book Excerpt : John A: The Man Who Made Us by Richard Gwyn In this compelling excerpt from his new bestseller, John A: The Man Who Made Us, Richard Gwyn tells the story of the last and least known of the Confederation conferences, in London in 1866-67, a meeting where John A. Macdonald was described as “the ruling genius.” Out of this meeting came the British North America Act, the division of powers and the memorable turn of phrase “peace, order and good government.” Book Review : Tasha Kheiriddin reviews John A: The Man Who Made Us by Richard Gwyn [summary not available] "La dénationalisation" by Alain Noël [summary not available] |
