Putting Autism on the National Agenda: Medicare for the 21st Century

Today (April 2nd) is World Autism Day. Almost all of us know someone who is afflicted with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). The Geneva Centre for Autism in Canada estimates that 1 in every 169 children is on the autistic spectrum. ASD presents an enormous challenge to our society in the 21st century.

Access to effective autism treatment such as Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) is very restricted across provinces, and little is available under Medicare with the notable exception of Alberta. Most provinces provide services for ASD children in a haphazard way generally through social services and mainly for respite and support, not medical treatment (although Ontario, for example, does provide some funds that can be used at home for ABA-type intervention).

Firm national action and leadership is required to provide effective autism treatment to all Canadians who need it, and ensure that the huge and growing numbers of children with ASD are able to contribute to society to the best of their abilities and do not become a heavy burden on the health care system as they grow older. Yet the current federal government refuses to take action to ensure equitable national access to medical treatment for autism on the grounds that it is not of national concern and is only a provincial matter. In contrast President Obama speaks eloquently on the national interest in dealing with autism and is a supporter of federal legislation – the Combating Autism Act – which allocates $945 million to autism treatment and research.

Surely Canadian history teaches us the importance of national initiatives that strengthen our social fabric and advance justice and equality. Surely we have learned that the measure of a great society and nation is how well we collectively take care of disadvantaged Canadians. Preserving the dignity of our neighbour preserves the dignity of us all. When we all contribute to and share the benefits of, for example, good health care, we are all better off.

Unfortunately our current national leadership ignores this important legacy, preferring minimalist national government (despite being forced into a temporary stimulus package), adhocery, divisive policies and rhetoric, and no vision. The few Canadians who voted in the depressing election last fall did so with little enthusiasm or sense of national pride.

We desperately need to put some energy and passion back into national politics, and demand bold and visionary leadership from our national politicians. So it is extremely refreshing to see the emergence of a strong grassroots network of parents and many others from all provinces and territories, who have set aside the all-too-prevalent cynicism, and have joined together to demand national action and to vigorously campaign for changes to Medicare to assure equitable access to autism treatment across Canada (See: National Autism Strategy/Medicare for Autism).

I view this national campaign for universal access to effective autism treatment as part of a much needed larger national debate – revamping Medicare for the twenty-first century.

Medicare has become less and less a national program and symbol drawing us together, and more and more an uneven patchwork of medically-required services across provinces, with tragic consequences as in the case of cancer pathology in Newfoundland and elsewhere. The time is long overdue to establish, at the national level, the services and medical treatments, as well as the associated national standards, which should be available to all Canadians under Medicare. Canadians in all provinces must have equal access to, for example, extensive services for autistic children, physiotherapy, adequate cancer treatment, or MRIs.

The Harper government is wrong to refuse to address the issue. At the very least, Medicare funding decisions must be made in a coherent fashion in a national framework given that we invest no less than $160 billion annually, of which $113 billion is from the public purse. But more importantly, there is a clear national interest and concern in preserving and updating our national health care system – an essential pillar of a strong 21st century nation, and a significant Canadian achievement to which the Americans now aspire.

We should establish a high profile arms-length national health commission (building on the existing National Health Council), with a clear mandate to develop a consensus and advise governments in a persuasive and public way on a whole range of issues such as:
• national standards in terms of coverage,
• how to ensure that Canadians do not have to leave the country for essential medical treatments or take governments to court to pay for essential medications or treatments,
• what is the acceptable degree of private delivery of publicly insured health services,
• how to ensure the portability of Medicare across the country.

We must also find the political will and determination among our elected representatives to bring coherence, consistency and accountability to the current mess of federal-provincial financial transfers, of which health care is a significant component. Regrettably we can no longer measure how well the myriad of federal contributions to the provinces, including equalization, helps to ensure comparable public services across Canada. No amount of tinkering with the arcane equalization formula, or ad hoc adjustments to transfers for health, education and social services, will fix this fundamental problem, especially in the purely partisan and divisive way pursued by the prime minister to date.

We need a permanent non-partisan advisory commission (similar to Australia) to take charge and establish a system of federal contributions to provinces that is much more transparent and subject to public scrutiny. Through such a commission, decisions relating to federal-provincial fiscal relations and transfers to provinces to support national programs and objectives, are much more likely to be based on intelligent debate and to contribute to the national interest in building stronger ties among Canadians rather than weakening them.

World Autism Day provides us with a good occasion to reflect on how far we have come and how far we have yet to go in building a fair and compassionate society, and discharging our collective responsibility for those less fortunate than ourselves.

Clean energy and the environment: Obama impresses, Harper regresses

President Obama’s proposed 2010 budget makes it clear he intends to achieve significant progress on the climate change and clean energy front, despite the formidable economic crisis. The President had signaled his seriousness throughout his campaign for the presidency and then with his cabinet appointments. His budget now includes a wide-range of concrete steps toward reducing dependence on oil; makes huge investments in clean technology, renewable energy and energy efficiency; increases the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency by 35%; and generally aims at switching the transportation system to electric vehicles while increasing fuel economy standards in gas-powered vehicles.

Predictably the opposition in Congress is gearing up for battle, hysterically projecting enormous increases in gas prices at the pump and retail electricity rates, and calling the cap and trade proposal that will put a price on carbon to reduce CO2 emissions, “a tax on everything”. Sound familiar?

Whatever the outcome, Obama’s bold national leadership on global warming, and his determination to proceed, is unambiguous and genuine. And he will use his exceptional ability to connect with Americans over the heads of his opposition with all the tools at his disposal.

Contrast Harper’s approach to climate change and clean energy – the antithesis of bold national leadership, transparency, and constructive debate bringing Canadians together.

While Obama champions an effective national cap-and-trade system that sets hard caps on carbon emissions, Harper silenced any intelligent discussion during the last election and produced an anemic plan for intensity targets, applicable only to large industrial emitters, that is justly ridiculed for allowing emissions to rise with production levels. His recent budget lacked any serious environmental focus whatsoever, notably with respect to renewable energy and energy efficiency. The federal government is so missing in action that Ontario and Quebec have now joined Manitoba and British Columbia to extend caps on CO2 emissions beyond large industrial emitters as part of the California-led Western Climate Initiative.

While Obama has taken steps to encourage maximum progress at the state level, Harper has sat pathetically on the sidelines while forward-thinking proposals for a modest carbon tax, adopted in British Columbia last year, have been undermined at every turn by the provincial NDP opposition. And we are unlikely to hear anything positive from the prime minister about the far-sighted action in Ontario’s recent Green Energy Act.

While Obama and his administration debate openly and transparently (See www.whitehouse.gov) and try to bring Americans together, Harper stifles debate at every turn, and prefers divisive regional wrangling and petty partisanship. Regional tensions, real or imagined, simmer and rise to fill the void left by the absence of national leadership. Canadians who express legitimate concern over the environmental impact of the oil sands development are subtly cast as eastern whiners, opposed to Alberta’s success in oil and gas. Quebec forges ahead to lock in huge exports of hydro-electric power to the United States, yet no national discussion takes place on the urgent need for an east-west smart electricity grid.

Recently, the prime minister has taken to complimenting himself on the strength of Canada’s banking system compared to the mess in other developed countries, notably the U.S. But he fails to draw the most important lesson. Our relative stability is due to long-standing coherent national regulation of our banking system, which fortuitously included higher capital ratios than was required internationally. Greater transparency has also meant that our exposure to sub-prime mortgages and synthetic derivatives was much less. In the U.S. during the 1930s, money-lending functions were assumed by local and state-chartered banks, leading to the decentralized, unregulated, anarchic system that exists today. In other words, we have a banking system that is stable thanks to coherent national action and regulation in Ottawa that predate Harper – the very kind of action required to make real progress on climate change and clean energy, but that Harper avoids.

Bold national leadership, transparency and constructive debate seem to be too much to hope for in Canada. No wonder so many Canadians look enviously at the United States and are cheering Obama on.

Equalization for uncertain times

From MetroNews, Wednesday February 18 (http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/Comment/article/183583)

How many times must Premier Danny Williams verbally explode about “equalization” before the Harper government abandons its hyper-partisan approach to serious matters of national interest?

Equalization is a very serious matter, which, together with other federal-provincial transfers for health, education and social services, plays a critical role in promoting equality of opportunity and comparable levels of services across Canada. This commitment defines a great nation.

Regrettably, we can no longer measure how well the myriad of federal contributions to the provinces, including equalization, helps to ensure comparable public services across Canada.

No amount of tinkering with the arcane equalization formula will fix this fundamental problem, especially since too many other federal programs incorporate confusing equalizing elements that exacerbate inequities among Canadians. The best example is employment insurance, which is structured to benefit the unemployed who live in weaker areas of the country.

There is urgent need to bring coherence, consistency and accountability to the jumble of federal contributions to provinces, especially with Ontario qualifying for equalization.

Unfortunately, the Harper government has no interest in promoting comparable public services — the recent manifestation of this being the elimination of all federal funds for child-care operations. Harper’s seemingly real agenda is to downsize the national government, download responsibilities and fiscal room, permanently eliminating Ottawa’s ability to pursue national standards and objectives in most public services and programs.

With every month in power, Harper draws closer to achieving his goal.

Harper’s signature step — the GST cut — reducing national revenue by $60 billion over five years, was a bad step in the best of times, universally condemned by economists, and now cripples the national government’s ability to respond in this, the worst of times. Yet Harper refuses to reconsider.

Opposition parties must directly challenge this agenda. Explain to Canadians why we must stop weakening the fiscal position of the federal government — taking care not to turn national politics into a complex and excruciatingly boring accounting problem. Propose the establishment of a permanent non-partisan advisory commission to make the system of federal contributions to provinces more transparent and subject to public scrutiny.

And ensure that, through the commission, decisions relating to federal-provincial fiscal relations are based on intelligent debate and reflect longer-term national objectives to build stronger ties among Canadians rather than weakening them.

Budgeting Backwards

From Metro News on Wednesday, February 4 (http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/Comment/article/176492):

As the dust settles after the much-anticipated delivery of Budget 2009, one troubling feature is emerging:

Despite the fact that women constitute 47.4 per cent — almost half — of the national workforce, the vast majority of the billions of stimulus dollars targeted for job creation favours men. And the margin is huge — whether in housing, construction, forestry, autos, or manufacturing.

But it’s not just women who should be concerned: By failing to address the worst economic crisis in decades within a fair and equitable framework, the budget illustrates a serious lack of forward-thinking at a time when we need to restructure the Canadian economy around industries based on innovative technological advances and our vibrant service sectors — major employers of women.

Budget 2009 has been called everything from “historic” to “inadequate” to “excessive” to “the end of conservatism.” It is none of these things. It is vintage Stephen Harper: A mishmash of mainly short-term job creation and credit-easing initiatives aimed at holding onto power and responding to the most basic expectations of frustrated Canadians who most certainly did not want an election or a repetition of the pre-Christmas hysterics.

To the extent the budget even considers the future, it does so through a rearview mirror: Shortsightedly subsidizing — rather than transforming -- declining sectors like the auto industry; failing to adequately adapt employment insurance and other social security provisions to the current challenging environment; and concentrating the stimulus spending primarily on physical infrastructure, however important.

Yet our social infrastructure — underpinning our all-important service sector where the vast majority of women (and Canadians) work — requires just as much attention as our decaying physical infrastructure.

At a minimum, significant new long-term public investment is required in scientific ­innovation and basic research, in education at all levels, in child care, geriatric care, community and social services. This will go far to support our most important national asset — our human capital — and ensure that we pull out of this crisis with a greener, more sustainable economy, and an educated, more productive workforce employed in 21st-century industries. Moreover, investing in women is smart economics according to participants at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, from Nike’s chief executive, to the head of UNICEF, to Melinda Gates. This holds true as much for developed countries like Canada as it does for developing countries.

Let us hope the women of Canada, who represent not only half the workforce but also half of the electorate, remember the inadequacies of this budget and this government at the next election.

Economic Crisis as Opportunity: Late Night Thoughts Listening to Late Night Pundits (with apologies to Lewis Thomas and Mahler's Ninth Symphony)

2008 has now passed into history as a year most people want to forget. 2009 is quickly shaping up as the year most people wish was already over, (or perhaps one that we could live backwards like Benjamin Button).

There is no longer any doubt that the world-wide financial crisis and credit freeze have precipitated the worst economic conditions in decades. Recession has clearly settled in and could get worse, as individuals and businesses begin to lock in longer term spending and investment plans that incorporate seriously reduced expectations.

Pensioners urgently need some hope that their retirement funds will recover sufficiently in their lifetimes; young people need to be confident that the billions of dollars now being spent is in their long-term interest, not a lifelong burden. And the many Canadians in between need inspiration and bold visionary national leadership to help lift the clouds that obscure what is still a bright future.

Canadians know that the economic crisis is not simply the result of greed and insanity on Wall Street that can be cured through a gigantic consumer shopping spree, financial regulatory reforms and more ethical behaviour. We know that we cannot simply spend or regulate our way out of fundamental social and economic change.

The multi-partisan consensus emerging on the need for a massive economic stimulus package, increases in social security payments, and critical financial reforms to ensure adequate credit, can only go so far to address our distress in the short-term.

We must now confront the consequences of our collective myopia over many years of excessive consumption with easy credit. Shopaholic consumers drove our savings rate to zero and sent household debt soaring, while we allowed the planet to overheat, the polar ice caps to melt, and dangerously degraded the quality of our air and water.

And not only did we fail to discharge our responsibility as custodians of the planet. But we also failed to discharge our responsibility to our fellow citizens and future generations.

As the world came to Canada, and we provided a safe haven and a stable base for so many new Canadians, we transformed in a relatively short period of time into the most cosmopolitan and diverse society in human history. And while we often acknowledge that our increasing diversity as a people, our huge pool of human talent, is our greatest strength, we have failed to pay sufficient attention to the increasing inequalities of opportunities and the rising inequalities of income and wealth. Building a fair and compassionate society is not a static destination, but an ongoing journey that demands mutual respect and cooperation on the part of us all. The fight for greater equality and justice can never end. And the measure of a great society and nation will always be how well we collectively take care of and lift up the most disadvantaged members, and how well we preserve the dignity of our neighbour in order to preserve the dignity of us all.

The economic crisis has exposed our collective weakness: that our ability to maintain an open, progressive, compassionate society – through environmentally sound development, excellent health care and public education, and an adequate safety net – is seriously compromised. Too many Canadians lack the necessary education for the jobs of today and in the future. Too many Canadians go to bed hungry with inadequate shelter. Meanwhile too much valuable political energy has been dissipated on our regional differences over everything from energy, to the environment, to transfer payments. And too many of our politicians have put parochial, petty and divisive concerns ahead of the national interest.

We urgently need bold and visionary national leadership, not just to show us how to deal with the economic crisis in the short term, but also how, in the long term, all Canadians can come together to moderate consumption and our carbon footprint, guarantee equality of opportunity, eliminate poverty and unemployment to the greatest extent possible, and undertake the long overdue social and economic adjustments to the profound changes in the global economy.

We are now poised at the beginning of what may be a decade of serious declines in older Canadian manufacturing industries. Already we face shortages of skilled workers for the new jobs being created, from mechanics, to specialized technicians for sophisticated machine tools and for work in power stations.

To succeed in the global economy and provide meaningful jobs, equality of opportunity and adequate income to all Canadians now requires the Canadian economy to restructure around industries based on innovative technological advances, and around the expansion of the vibrant service sectors in our urban centres.

Our biggest challenge during this transition is the training and education deficit. This is the result of years of underfunding and lack of purpose and direction on the part of both governments and employers.

We must commit ourselves to nothing less than giving every Canadian the opportunity for the best education and training possible to assure meaningful work and ongoing employment in 21st century industries.

Establishing this fundamental education foundation will involve significant new investments at all levels, from early childhood education, elementary and high schools, to a wide range of post-secondary education. Indeed since virtually all the meaningful jobs of the future will require at least a couple of years of community college, two years of community college should be publicly funded and delivered free of charge for occupations facing critical shortages, as we do elementary and secondary school education. Among other things, easy availability of ongoing community college training for employees in some U.S. states has proven to be a significant attraction to the location and expansion of companies on the leading edge of technological change.

We must dramatically expand accessibility to all forms of post-secondary education to all qualified Canadians through our national network of 94 universities and 132 colleges. We have to start now to train many more teachers and to educate many more scientists and engineers. We must guarantee that the education and training credentials of new Canadians will be expeditiously recognized and/or supplemented. The 40% of immigrants with university degrees who are now in chronic low-income jobs constitutes a tragic waste of human talent that cannot be ignored. And we must guarantee that all education and training credentials will be recognized across Canada and ensure full mobility of workers. (Fortuitously, after years of resistance, the provinces appear to have finally agreed to eliminate all barriers to the full mobility of persons, goods, services and investments within Canada by next year. Astonishingly we may at last have something approximating a real national economic union, 142 years after becoming a nation).

At the same time, we need to make sure that employers as well can embrace the challenges of a knowledge economy. Canada ranks poorly compared to other industrialized countries in on-the-job training. Our productivity growth rate, our ability to work smart, has fallen below that of our competitors. We need to provide incentives for employers to train their workers and to invest in productivity improvements that can maintain our competitiveness.

Only with a staunch national commitment to a solid education foundation will we be able to find the workers to transform Canada’s traditional factory base into, for example, a “hub of green manufacturing” on the leading edge of technological change in a wide range of areas. We can build a world class manufacturing base in renewable energy components spurred on by the massive changes in the global energy sector and the growing public concern with energy conservation and efficiency. Our rural sector can be on the leading edge of “green agriculture” and expanding viable organic food production operations. Our forestry sector can be leaders in eco-efficiency and building pulp and paper mills that reuse mill residue to produce energy, fuels or chemicals. New and upgraded power grids can be constructed, including a long overdue East-West electricity grid for wheeling electricity across provinces. Alberta can become a world leader in clean energy and green technologies. Municipalities can be on the leading edge of developing integrated energy systems involving on-site renewable energy, district energy and combined heat and power. Public transit, high speed trains, broadband networks and even putting medical records online are all promising areas for a vibrant 21st century economy and will be more easily pursued with a well-educated workforce.

Most importantly, substantial financing is needed for basic scientific research that will foster free-ranging scientific innovation subject to open access policies. This will spur everything from medical breakthroughs on cancer and the environmental causes of ill-health, to new discoveries for greater energy efficiency and effectiveness and waste reduction (green chemistry initiatives such as the ability to mix and then separate oil and water, discovered by the 2009 recipient of the prestigious Polanyi research grant), to new batteries that will store electricity for transportation, wind and solar generation, to safer cell phone technology, and to effective action to protect Canadians by eliminating the dangerous toxins in the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe.

The recent collapse of Nortel put an end to the biggest corporate spender on research and development in the country, and exposed the shallowness of our advanced technology sector, leaving only Research in Motion as a world class Canadian success story. And parts of Nortel may well be sold to Huawei Technologies, a Chinese rival that has been seeking to expand its North American base. There has never been a more urgent time for public investment to play a central role in strengthening our capacity to innovate and lead in technological developments.

The other long-term source of productive employment is the already dominant service sector especially in our vibrant urban centres. Intensifying media, financial and arts and cultural hubs is a natural avenue. We must also employ many more service providers in a national program for child care and early childhood education, in assisting our senior citizens both in their own homes and in retirement homes, and in providing the wide range of community services that are in high demand whether for assistance to new Canadians, for opening schools as community hubs after the school day ends, for services for disabled Canadians.

We absolutely must emerge from this crisis with a greener, more sustainable economy, and an educated, more productive and innovative workforce employed in 21st century industries and globally connected around the world. Our national leadership must start now to promote a cultural transformation that redefines wealth as well-being, not well-having. We need leadership to encourage us to live intelligently and frugally, not wastefully. We need to build a Canada where achievement is measured by our commitment and responsibility to our fellow citizens, not by our level of consumption. And most importantly, we need our leaders to encourage Canadians in all parts of the country to listen and respond to the concerns and aspirations of others, and understand the urgency to undertake together the national initiatives and programs that strengthen us as a whole and will benefit future generations.

We are Canadians without borders, with bridges and bonds to many countries, looking forward to an exciting future. We want to embrace our national responsibilities that are integral to our citizenship in this great nation. We are prepared to ask at least as much of ourselves as we ask of our governments. But we need bold and visionary national leadership to guide us out of the current economic morass with a combination of domestic initiatives and international engagement, which can inspire us once again to look over the horizon and leave a better world for our children and grandchildren.

The short-term - Budget 2009 and beyond

There is widespread agreement that in order to promote economic recovery and generate as much employment as possible, Canada must implement an economic stimulus package with sufficient public investment and spending to offset the serious decline in private investment and spending. To the greatest extent possible, all public initiatives should try to reflect our longer-term priorities of investing in a more productive economic base and ensuring that the return to economic prosperity coincides with environmental protection.

Large investments in our essential physical infrastructure such as in public transit, transportation networks, social housing, installing solar panels, retrofitting buildings, fixing our decaying sewers and water mains, will all be crucial components of an effective stimulus package. Related tax measures could include refundable tax credits for home renovations, and for energy efficient buildings and appliances. Provisions could also be made for low-interest loans to renewable energy developers, and for accelerated depreciation on the production of energy efficient goods and services. And a high priority should be attached to doing whatever is necessary to eliminate the unacceptable third world conditions that exist in too many of our aboriginal communities.

In addition to physical infrastructure, we need to invest in our social infrastructure, to ensure the early childhood educators and geriatric home support workers can meet the needs of Canadians. Moreover, since it is likely that most physical infrastructure projects have a disproportionately male workforce, this is a way to ensure that women can also benefit from a stimulus jobs package.

Urgent action is also needed to address the immediate financial distress faced by Canadians, and to put adequate funds in the hands of the most vulnerable Canadians. Fortunately Canada is in a position to rapidly expand/adjust certain components of our social safety net to improve financial security for Canadians. We can enhance Employment Insurance (eligibility requirements, income replacement levels etc), restore a financial contribution by the national government, and recognize that an unemployed person is the same as any other unemployed person in Canada no matter what the regional unemployment rate. We must also expand the use of EI for training, and improve eligibility access to EI programs. Other steps include increasing the child tax benefit, the working income tax benefit and the GST credit, and implementing income tax cuts, but only for those at the lowest end by both lowering the lowest tax rate and raising the basic exemption below which no taxes are payable. (Consideration may have to be given to eventually assisting provinces with their increased welfare costs as more and more of the newly-unemployed exhaust or are unable to access EI).

It is important to be principled with respect to any changes on the tax front. Most experts including economists agree that, unlike direct spending, tax cuts (except at the lower income levels) will not result in a significant stimulus to the national economy. Taxpayers will save the largest proportion of any tax cut, and another chunk will leak out as imports are purchased.

Taxes are indeed “the price we pay for a civilized society”. During the recent U.S. election, Barack Obama responded to the shrieks of Sarah Palin that paying taxes was unpatriotic, by patiently explaining to Joe the Plumber, the contrary: that the extra taxes you may pay as a result of becoming more successful and earning more income, are not transferred to some stranger, but to a version of your former less successful self – a person who now needs the help to get ahead themselves. People who are now successful should care for the ones left behind, because in most cases they were once left behind themselves. More generally, our embrace of an economic system that can generate so much wealth should be balanced by our promotion of social programs that redress the economic imbalances that the system creates.

Whatever short term steps are taken on the spending, investment or taxation fronts, we must devise some mechanism to assure Canadians that the investment and spending is indeed furthering our long term interest in building a sustainable, dynamic social economy. We need some sort of national monitoring program that is open, accessible and accountable, and a national registry of projects receiving funds. During the U.S. election, Barack Obama endorsed the idea of a National Infrastructure Bank (or Bank for Infrastructure Development) that could determine the value of each project and its environmental impact, streamline the process of reviewing and signing off on major projects, and perhaps even raise money itself, or in connection with a network of local investment banks, regionally operated, that would invest in the best local organizations. A Bill proposing the creation of the bank is currently working its way through the U.S. Senate, and mandates a bipartisan board of directors, and a CEO to be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Canada should certainly consider something similar.

The proposed auto bailout illustrates well the need to monitor expenditures objectively and carefully. A bailout of the North American automobile industry should only very reluctantly be undertaken because of the catastrophic results of an immediate collapse. The public investment must carry very strict conditions. For example, supplicant companies must accept, say, a 3 year deadline for the production of a substantial proportion of fuel-efficient vehicles, as well as provide detailed plans to transform some of their factories into research and manufacturing centres for the development of light rail cars and high speed trains. We should not forget that the current corporate leadership of the big three North American auto makers are the ones who have spent millions of dollars fighting tighter emissions standards imposed by California and other states, and who, only a couple of months ago, moaned that their dire plights were not the result of their failure to anticipate the need for smaller more fuel-efficient cars, but the fault of consumers who let them down by first demanding and then abandoning gas-guzzling SUVs. (The Ford slogan of “Everything we do is driven by you” perfectly reflects the abdication of corporate leadership). The astonishing mediocrity of corporate leadership in this and so many other areas, notably financial, should lead us to be severely skeptical of allowing any of those persons responsible for the current crisis to have a serious role in taking us out of it.

One simple first step toward a responsible approach to our public finances and dealing with the projected $34 billion deficit for 2009-2010 and a possible $105 billion deficit over the next 5 years, is a firm commitment to ensure that ecological principles are integrated every step of the way into our budget, investment and planning processes. We must also seek out new sources of revenue to help finance the huge investments and spending. One such source could be a financial transactions tax – perhaps a 0.25% levy on the sale or transfer of stocks, bonds and other financial assets. This would be a relatively lucrative and progressive tax, and would go far to ensure that we do not leave an unbearable burden of debt to future generations. Another step could be the harmonization of the GST and provincial sales taxes which would not only help businesses across Canada and solidify the nascent national economic union, but also could be calibrated to restore an appropriate and acceptable level of consumption tax revenue to the national government.

Finally, bold short term action is needed on the financial front to ensure adequate credit for businesses and employers to help boost the economic recovery. We should of course be relieved that Canada has escaped the worst of the banking crisis, thanks in part to our conservative capital requirements requiring banks to maintain a ratio of 7% of their loans and investments, a ratio that is higher than the international requirement of 4%. But credit is very tight in the Canadian economy and businesses of all sizes, even with impeccable credit records, are unable to borrow what they need. The federal government has already bought $75 billion of mortgages from bank portfolios, offered temporary federal insurance on inter-bank loans to loosen the flow, invested $350 million in the Business Development Bank of Canada, and is now considering amendments to the Bank Act to allow it to buy shares in banks. With decidedly mixed results, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions has loosened the rules for so-called Tier I capital so that banks can count more as capital toward maintaining their minimum capital ratios. But more will have to be done to ensure that banks and non-banks get back in the business of lending again.

On the monetary policy front, with the Bank of Canada key lending rate now at historic lows, the Bank has only limited additional room for controlling the money supply by lowering the price of credit. But there are other avenues open to the Bank to expand credit in the financial system and get more money into the public’s hands. For example, the Bank can bypass the banks and buy for the first time a wide range of securities including commercial paper and other loans that are packaged into bonds.

The proposed National Securities Commission could enhance the capacity to raise capital now and for the Canadian businesses of the future, as well as provide much more effective investor protection. A strong regional component to the Commission will be important given the concerns of Alberta and Quebec, and as a way to ensure that the incestuous relationship that developed between Wall Street and the enforcement/oversight side of the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission which allowed the Madoff fraud and others to fester, will not be replicated between Canada’s major securities centre, Bay Street, and the Canadian commission.

Pension reforms are also necessary to ensure Canadians greater security from the vagaries of the stock market and ill-advised investment strategies. Already the federal government has loosened regulations to permit private pension plans to cover shortfalls in 10 years instead of 5, and most provinces which in fact have jurisdiction over 90% of the private pension plans, are moving in the same direction. The federal government is also considering new types of pensions – permitting multiple employers to jointly sponsor pension plans, and a hybrid plan to permit employees to help share the cost of a shortfall especially in defined contribution plans. But given the magnitude of the underfunding difficulties now emerging in private pension plans as companies go bankrupt and are relieved of their pension funding obligations, it may be advisable over the long term, to enhance the Canadian/Quebec Pension Plan, still the largest and most efficient pension arrangement in the country, covering all Canadians.

One case study in poor corporate leadership that merits close scrutiny involves Canada’s largest pension fund - the Caisse de dépôt et placement de Québec. The Caisse was in large measure responsible for Canada’s version of the sub-prime market mess. Fortunately, the $30 billion Asset-Backed Commercial Paper (ABCP) crisis has now been contained through the efforts of two men – the legendary fixer Purdy Crawford and the new Bank of Canada governor, Mark Carney – only in Canada, eh? But this was no thanks to the Caisse which is now in the process of writing down some $13 billion of ABCP to the detriment of its clients, after precipitating, to save itself and the other major ABCP investors, the freeze in the ABCP market that has been in effect since August 2007 and that has adversely affected the legitimate commercial paper market.

We most certainly need new financial regulations and oversight, and more competent corporate leadership, to ensure that these kind of risky securities never see the light of day again, together with the alphabet soup of so-called synthetic derivatives on which too many of our best and brightest misguidedly wasted their energy and talents. And investors need to realize that if an investment return seems too good to be true, it probably is.

International Engagement

As Canada joined the other members of the newly recognized Group of 20 at George Bush’s emergency summit last November, one could not fail to note how Canada’s relative global position has weakened particularly vis-à-vis the emerging markets, at least according to the traditional indices of national and global economic power. Fortunately Canada is well-positioned to recover a preeminent position in the 21st century for two reasons. National power and global influence will increasingly depend on a nation’s social stability, access to safe, clean sources of energy, clean air and water, a good health care system and adequate preparedness to withstand a pandemic. National power and global influence will also increasingly depend on a nation’s growing diversity of population, its ability to absorb new people and cultures and create a huge pool of human talent, which is firmly networked into the international community. Canada starts out reasonably well on both counts, although we need to improve our social safety net and our anemic environmental record.

More and more Canadians are global citizens – Canadians without borders – exploring the world or staying connected to our countries of origins more instantly, more easily, and more inexpensively than ever before. A recent study shows that three quarters of Canadians have traveled outside the country, and one half is closely connected with one or more foreign countries and is following international events closely. Canada provides a safe haven, and a stable base that permits more and more Canadians to build business and commercial links to their home countries and nurture global networks that are enormously valuable economically, socially and politically. We should encourage these networks and the associated employment opportunities for all Canadians, possibly using tax incentives and subsidies to assist new Canadians who create businesses based on their links to their home countries.

With the unlamented and widely ignored collapse of the most recent round of multilateral trade talks (Doha Round) after its drift into irrelevance as food prices soared and no progress was made on agricultural tariffs, we should explore how to strengthen our global networks through “New Economy relationships” with other countries around the world, going beyond the classic free trade agreement approach. For example, trade between Canada and India is still relatively small and our exports are predominantly minerals and agricultural and forest products. A senior advisor to the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada, Paul Evans, suggests sensibly that we should expand the economic ties between our two countries in different directions, through increasing science and technology cooperation, including university exchanges, and measures to address barriers to investment.

As we thoroughly integrate into the economic, social and political global networks of the 21st century, it is very important for Canada to play a significant and creative role shaping the structure and rules of global governance.

Yet at the recent G-20 Summit, the Canadian government regrettably took the very backward-looking position of supporting the then lame duck American president, George Bush, in opposing the European-led call for global regulation of the international financial markets. And virtually no thinking appears yet to have gone into a coherent Canadian position on the larger issue of building a new international institutional structure to replace/update the post-World War II international financial and monetary system.

Perhaps most urgently, Canada must be at the front ranks of the G-8 and G-20 in supporting the World Bank president's call for a vulnerability fund to dispense fast and flexible aid to developing countries which cannot afford bailouts and deficits, and which are still suffering from astronomical food prices. The economic crisis has already pushed 100 million people back into poverty, through no fault of their own, and will inevitably provoke dangerous unrest. One option is for countries to commit a certain percentage of their stimulus package to the vulnerability fund - perhaps 0.7% (parallel to the percentage of GDP that Canada and others have committed to and, shamefully, never yet succeeded in providing for international aid.

The 2008 stock market crash and world wide credit freeze has put an end to the post-war American dominance of the international economic order and has undermined the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. For decades no one seriously questioned the value of the American dollar, and the U.S. was able to consume much more than it produced and run enormous current account deficits. For better or for worse, countries like China, India, Russia and the Gulf States were willing to hold huge amounts of U.S. dollars as reserves, wrongly believing that this would protect them from sudden withdrawals of foreign capital, while it instead fuelled the global credit bubble.

As Niall Ferguson describes well in this latest book, The Ascent of Money, China’s willingness to hold U.S dollar securities as payment for the exports from China that allowed the Chinese economy to grow so phenomenally quickly, in turn helped keep interest rates low in the U.S. giving Americans the money to buy shares, flat screen TVs and homes, and then borrow against their homes to the hilt. And thus was created the global asset and credit bubble which finally burst in 2008. The global crisis is therefore as much the result of policy mistakes and a failure to counter the rapid build up of reserves in the emerging markets, as it is the result of greed and insanity on Wall Street. (Note the irony that China is effectively financing the Iraq War, even while protesting the conflict and financing its own highly questionable geopolitical spending in pursuit of resource security, in the Sudan and elsewhere).

Americans have now lost most of their credibility on the international financial stage. As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz notes acerbically, there is great hypocrisy in how the U.S. used to lecture the rest of the world about getting their economic house in order by imitating the American way – deregulation, privatization, freeing market forces, reducing deficits, lowering taxes. Few countries, especially those that suffered the indignities of the U.S.-inspired and IMF-imposed conditions for financial assistance during the 1990s financial crisis, now consider the American financial system and deregulation to be a model to follow.

Canada should play an active role in encouraging the international community to come together to design a new international regime to reflect the new power realities, and to manage in a more integrated way not just financial issues, but also climate change and trade.

In the IMF, for example, China holds only 3.5% of the voting rights despite the fact that it is the world’s third largest economy, while the U.S. has 17% and a veto over all significant IMF decisions. At the very least, a large and dynamic economy like China’s must be allocated more voting weight in the IMF, commensurate with a substantial increase in their contribution to the IMF’s capital base. And the IMF should expand its operations, reduce its controversial conditionality, and eventually establish a swap line with the central bank of China, as it has done with the European Central Bank and the U.S. Federal Reserve. This will ensure that the IMF will be able to react more quickly in future crises. Only recently have IMF loans finally been extended to Iceland ($2.1 billion), Hungary ($25.1 billion), Ukraine ($16.5 billion), and Pakistan ($7.6 billion), and a new IMF short-term liquidity facility now grants unconditional three month loans to emerging markets with manageable debts. But the initial delay in the IMF responding, for example, to the Iceland bank meltdown allowed Russia to step in quickly with a substantial contribution that was clearly motivated by its geopolitical aspirations in the Norwegian Sea.

In restructuring the IMF and increasing China’s weight and contribution, one can fully expect China to continue to complain about any assessment by the IMF as to whether the Chinese currency is being deliberately undervalued to give China a trade advantage. (China is currently blocking an IMF report in this regard). Yet however true this assessment might be, even if the report is published, the IMF has no enforcement capability. Therefore, any restructuring of the international institutions dealing with trade and finance must reassess the IMF jurisdiction over exchange rates and balance of payments problems and ensure coordination with the jurisdiction of the more recently created World Trade Organization (WTO) that is authorized to take action against illegal export subsidies or import taxes, of which an undervalued currency is the equivalent.

Canada should be very active in all discussions to design a new international regime to manage both climate change and trade at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in November 2009. This is the follow-up to the Kyoto meeting which produced the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Dealing with climate change and the urgent need to reduce our carbon footprint on the planet remains a top priority for most nations despite the economic crisis. The central objective at Copenhagen must be to involve all major carbon emitters from both developed and developing nations and to move away from trade sanctions against countries that do not adequately support the environment. As Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist of the World Bank, recommends, participation and compliance is better obtained through transfers of finance and technology. China and others will certainly agree with this since they view climate change as a problem caused by the richer industrial nations. Whatever is ultimately achieved at the Copenhagen Summit, the WTO must be involved in a subordinate way to ensure that any “green tariffs” at the national level do not result in damaging trade distortions.

With a new and popular America president who has promised to “reengage” and “work constructively within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change”, and who intends to be proactive on the environment, the international calculus for the Copenhagen Summit has changed considerably. Indeed perhaps a good sign is that Republican stalwarts like John Bolton are already starting to panic and ring alarm bells about a “disturbing trend” toward support for global governance in the Obama administration, and the possibility that Obama may bring into force certain international treaties such as the Climate Change Convention, with only the support of majorities in both Houses of Congress, rather than the stricter condition of a 2/3rds majority in the Senate.

Finally, Canada must be active with the other G-20 regulators of cross-border financial institutions that were tasked to form “supervisory colleges” of sorts to work out better international financial regulations and coordination. A number of ideas for coordinated international action include:

1.End the official status of rating agencies. Issuers should be banned from paying for ratings. Investors should pay privately, or the service should be publicly provided.

2.Draft an international code of conduct for Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF) that will focus on transparency and maintaining purely commercial objectives of SWFs. (The IMF completed one such draft in October 2008). Although countries have rules to prevent foreign control of strategic assets, it is reasonable to be concerned about state-based investors especially when most of the trillions of dollars of funds are held by a small group of authoritarian countries – China, Saudi Arabia and Russia. Concentrated ownership by authoritarian governments is a strategic and economic concern to many, and merits a coordinated international response.

3.The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) that has been responsible for establishing international capital requirements for banks is preparing, together with the Financial Stability Forum, to make significant policy changes in the wake of the international credit freeze. A consensus has emerged that the so-called Basel II Accord that required banks to lower their reserves in good times but then increase them in bad times, is in fact the opposite of what is required for the capitalization of banks. Instead reserves must be built up in the good times so that there is a cushion that can be drawn upon during the bad times such as now.

4.Eventually we should consider international coordination with respect to a common approach for stabilizing and recapitalizing banks, and with respect to coordinated interest rate cuts.

Almost every aspect of our daily lives has a global dimension. All the serious challenges we face whether the current economic crisis, climate change, dreadful poverty, wars, sicknesses, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, all require global cooperation and global solutions, but also decisive national leadership at home.

The longer we fail to act coherently and effectively, both nationally and internationally, the narrower our options and the greater the potential for catastrophe.

With so many of us active outside Canada and globally-connected, Canadians must demand a clear and respected Canadian voice on the world stage and in the global corridors of power. Canada and Canadians can and must play a leading role in the pursuit of greater peace and humanity, a narrowing of inequalities across developed and developing nations, and greater respect for our fragile ecosystems and planetary survival.

There should be no doubt that with clear global vision and decisive national leadership, Canadians are uniquely positioned to be in the front ranks of a world without borders.

Canadians Without Borders

Nov. 21, 2008

What does it mean to be Canadian when we come from everywhere?

How do we forge a shared national purpose among people who have never shared anything before and who come from every corner of the globe? How do we provide a sense of direction, a road map to our street in the global village ─ something that emotionally connects with Canadians?

The great unifying national projects of the past such as Medicare and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms are now all about mechanics, not poetry ─ past achievements to be defended, and of course improved.

We need new poetry, something once again to inspire us, to fire up our collective imagination.

Canada has become a magnet to people from around the world. We have transformed in a relatively short period of time into the most cosmopolitan and diverse society in human history. And because of our accident of geography ─ vast spaces from sea to sea to sea ─ we have a huge potential to transform even further.

By 2050 the population in the developing world will increase by over 2 billion people; already more than half the population in countries such as Iran and Pakistan is under the age of 20. The forces of globalization will create both incredible wealth but also suffering on a global scale. We will experience enormous environmental challenges and massive population shifts, as modern-day nomads disregard borders and seek a means of livelihood and an escape from dreadful poverty, wars, and sicknesses.

Canada is on the leading edge of this population shift. The world is coming to Canada. Indeed more and more Canadians are now global citizens, exploring the world or staying connected to our countries of origins more instantly, more easily, and more inexpensively than ever before. Mobile telephones, the Internet, wireless devices ─ these are our passports to a world without borders, reflected in the widespread use of YouTube, Facebook, Google Talk, Skype…

But what draws us together if it is not ethnicity, religion, language or other traditional markers of national unity?

Is it a common sense of tolerance? No, it cannot be. People are not knocking on Canada’s doors because we are “tolerant”. Our welcome mat does not say: “please come here and as long as you do not bother anyone, no one will bother you.” Tolerance cannot be an end in itself. We owe each other more than tolerance.

New Canadians do not arrive in Canada wishing to pay $600 or more a month to send their children to faith-based private schools, and seal themselves off in an enclave. This undermines Canada’s internal strength and global potential. Canadians, new and old, do not define themselves by their ethnicity, religion, language or a province. Nor do we define ourselves with material things – not the cars we drive, the houses we own, nor the areas in which we live. We do not define ourselves with borders.

Canadians choose Canada because of the opportunity, both economic and social. Canada represents the best of universal values ─ justice, equality, diversity, the rule of law, fundamental freedoms, equal rights, non-discrimination, and a chance to live in peace and humanity. Canada provides a safe haven, and a base from which to reach out to the troubled areas of the world and teach what we have learned in Canada ─ how to live together peaceably, compassionately, and respectfully, exercising the mutual responsibilities that go along with the rights of citizenship.

Surely our destiny is to show the world that a progressive, vigorous, multiethnic democracy can thrive in the twenty-first century and be a model for a troubled world, increasingly challenged by religious and sectarian friction, and environmental catastrophes. Our increasing diversity as a people, our huge pool of human talent, must be our greatest strength from which we forge a clear national purpose.

This national purpose must be to improve the quality of life both in Canada and elsewhere, to promote a common sense of humanity, good government and good citizenship around the globe, to collaborate globally to ensure that economic prosperity coincides with environmental preservation.

We have a mission to export the type of pluralistic, creative, modern society we are building in Canada. We have every right to be proud and assertive, not weighed down by “middleness”, diffidence, the all too typical Canadian “Excuse me, sorry to bother you” attitude.

We need our leaders to be poets, not merely pollsters.

We need bold and visionary national leadership to inspire us to confidently take on the world, and convey a sense of forward motion in our complex world. We are ready, willing and able to ask as much of ourselves as we ask of our governments.

Almost every aspect of our daily lives has a global dimension. All the serious challenges we face—from global warming and energy security to nuclear proliferation and terrorism; from global poverty and economic inequality to the modern day slave trade in women and children and the lethal arms trade fuelling regional conflicts—require global cooperation and global solutions and decisive national leadership. The longer we fail to act coherently and effectively both nationally and internationally, the narrower our options and the greater the potential for catastrophe.

Our national government must govern resolutely for all Canadians. Our prime minister and foreign minister, in particular, must provide clear directions for national and international action.

We cannot have foreign policy going off in 10 or 12 different directions. We need a clear Canadian voice on the world stage, and coherent national government at home.

We must support and encourage all those Canadians involved outside Canada in business, education, arts and culture, sports, the foreign service, non-governmental organizations, civil society groups and our military.

Our military in particular is now at the forefront of forging new means of civil-military cooperation – using our military strength to make possible the delivery of humanitarian and development assistance in the growing number of complicated conflicts worldwide.

With clear global vision and bold national leadership, Canadians are uniquely positioned to be in the front ranks of a world without borders.

Canada's National Government Missing In Action

Canadians have traditionally looked to the Liberal Party of Canada for a sense that Canada means something more than the sum of its parts. Canadians know that a collection of provinces and territories, without bold and visionary national leadership, is not a real country.

Under the leadership of the Pearson and Trudeau governments in particular, we pulled together as a nation to strive to provide the essentials of Canadian citizenship – clean air, clean water, safe streets, our parks, healthcare, maternity benefits and parental leave, pensions, public education, equality of opportunity, and adequate income and other supports. In this process, we learned that when we all contribute to and share the benefits of good healthcare, we are all better off. We learned that the best way to build the bonds of compassion, empathy and social solidarity is by having our children attend great public schools in an environment that reflects the diversity in society around us. Most importantly, we learned that the measure of a great society and nation is how well we collectively take care of and lift up the weakest members, and that preserving the dignity of our neighbour preserves the dignity of us all.

But what we may not have learned is that building a fair and compassionate society is not a destination, but a journey. The fight for greater equality and justice never ends. Nothing should be taken for granted.

Recent national governments have brought an end to that sense of forward momentum and nation-building. First, the Mulroney Conservative governments downsized and outsourced the federal government to consultants, shifted power and initiative to the provinces, and made the advocacy of national programs and standards politically unacceptable. Our national government became dangerously weakened under leadership that seemed more interested in pandering to parochialism and partisanship, than governing in the national interest.

Then, successive Liberal national governments, and now the Harper Conservative governments, have been unable or unwilling to reverse the public perception that national programs, standards and initiatives, and bold national leadership, are not a good thing. So for example, national childcare, announced with much fanfare by the Liberals in 1993, finally made it into a very loose province-by-province arrangement some 12 years later, only to be promptly abandoned by Harper’s first Conservative minority government. A serious proposal for a national securities regulator, that was ready before Mulroney’s Conservatives were elected in 1984, has since languished in obscurity. The 1993 Agreement on Internal Trade intended to reduce barriers to goods, services and people across the country, was neutered by the provincial governments, such that we are now more disconnected and dysfunctional than the European Union. National environmental policies were not (until recently) championed by the national political parties, but were promoted more through citizen activism (legal and otherwise) which today perversely underpins both the Green Party and the election of another Harper Conservative government. And the Harper Conservative government has now become adept at setting province against province while unwinding the federal government, and slicing and dicing Canadians into those, for example, who have kids playing soccer or music, and those who do not, with useless boutique tax credits which erode the neutrality of our tax system.

National action - from food safety, to clean air and water, to removing toxins in our environment - has, at best, been anemic, incoherent and after-the-fact. At worst, it has placed the public in jeopardy. Medicare is less and less a national program and symbol drawing us together, and more and more an uneven patchwork of medically-required services across provinces, with tragic consequences as in the case of cancer pathology in Newfoundland. Our physical infrastructure is dangerously decayed and public transit is totally inadequate everywhere. And the widening inequality of income and wealth among Canadians is totally unacceptable.

We now have the Council of the Federation, composed of provincial and territorial leaders, starting to sound prime ministerial. After the recent federal election, Gordon Campbell, premier of British Columbia, announced that all premiers now want all barriers to the free flow of goods, services and people within the country to be ended by next spring. The provincial governments are also busy in the international arena, including trade visits to China - without any federal participation. And Quebec, not the federal government, spearheads negotiations for an EU-Canada free trade deal. What does all this provincial activity mean? Sadly, it means a vacuum of leadership at the national level, and very little chance of any collective coherence emerging from the clouds of provincial rhetoric.

Yet, we cannot wait another 15 or 25 years for a national securities regulator or an effective economic union and full mobility of all workers across Canada.

We cannot wait to implement an effective national climate change program, including significant progress towards renewable energy, energy conservation and efficiency, and huge national investments in infrastructure and public transit.

We cannot wait any longer for quality child care, early childhood education and expanded flexible parental leave.

We cannot wait any longer to end the shameful third world conditions endured by aboriginal Canadians in so many reserve communities, and to address the shortcomings of Canada’s relationship with its First Nations.

Finally, we cannot wait any longer for effective action to protect Canadians from dangerous toxins in the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe.

Under Mr. Harper’s Conservatives, the federal government is missing in action. We need effective concrete national action and inspiration now. Canadians need the Liberal Party of Canada to return to its role of providing Canadians with a clear choice. Do we want the incredible shrinking national government of the Conservative Party with the relentless downloading of responsibilities and fiscal room to the provinces? Or do we want bold visionary national leadership that gives us a sense of national purpose and pride, and sees national government as an instrument of the people, not as a business to be downsized?

Let us have vigorous national initiatives that say that we believe that every Canadian should have the opportunity for the best education and training possible to assure meaningful work and ongoing employment.

Let us have national leadership that inspires us to build a Canada where achievement is measured by our commitment and responsibility to our fellow citizens, not by our level of consumption, a Canada where we live intelligently, not wastefully, and ask as much of ourselves as we ask of our governments.

Let us establish a national renewable energy standard for every utility in the country, and require that all utilities get paid for how much gas and electricity consumers save, rather than what they use. Some provinces are already starting to do this, but if the federal and provincial governments can agree on how to achieve such national standards, with federal incentives as necessary, this will help create the domestic demand and collective national effort that will really propel us forward as a country.

Let us stop weakening the fiscal position of the federal government. Among other things, take steps to help businesses such as by harmonizing the GST and all the provincial sales taxes, and encourage significant investments in clean energy and energy savings that will modernize and save many jobs in our traditional sectors like pulp and paper, and create jobs in the industries of the future.

Let us once and for all put an end to the sterile arguments about equalization and transfer payments to the provinces, which turn national politics into a complex and excruciatingly boring accounting problem. Instead, establish new arrangements administered by a non-partisan commission that will examine all transfers between federal and provincial governments – health, education, housing, equalization – and ensure we achieve the fundamental goal that all Canadians have access to comparable public services regardless of where they live.

Let us bring Medicare into the 21st century and establish a non-partisan national health commission to ensure that the same medically-necessary services are available to all Canadians, from services for autism to physiotherapy to MRIs.

Let us have a proactive consumer protection commission that is ahead of the curve and inspires confidence, not fear and confusion.

The 2008 federal election failed miserably to excite Canadians. The few who did vote did so with little enthusiasm or sense of national purpose or pride. There was no appeal to our better selves to pull together as we enter uncertain economic times, nothing to add some energy and passion back into national politics and government, nothing to remind us that we are stronger when we act together as Canadians and share in national projects and endeavours.

Certainly a federal government involves negotiation and compromise. But negotiation and compromise is nothing without bold and visionary national leadership – leadership that engages all Canadians in the greater project of building something unique: the most cosmopolitan nation in history committed to justice, equality, diversity, and a significant leader in our global community in the pursuit of a more peaceful, equitable and secure world.

We are Canadians without borders, with bridges and bonds to many countries, looking forward to an exciting future. We want to embrace our national responsibilities that are integral to our citizenship in this great nation. Canadians must have the opportunity next time to vote for a strong national government that can inspire us to look over the horizon and leave a better world for our children and grandchildren.