Part 2 of this four-part series presents a first case study: the building and maintenance of our national infrastructure.
Part 1 focuses on Canada’s need to break out of election-cycle thinking and transform our approach to national governance and public finances.
Our national government no longer governs for all Canadians as citizens of one great country, and refuses to address matters of national interest.
Canada won’t stay competitive if we remain primarily “hewers of wood and drawers of water.”
Good government in the 21st century is much less about sterile debates over levels of expenditure and much more about providing ethical leadership and establishing national priorities.
We conclude 2009 with little achieved and much that is troubling. The government record can best be summarized as peeling the onion of conservative government initiatives, only to find….there is no onion.
The federal government’s ability to act in the national interest is dangerously diminishing. National survival as a viable entity now appears to be in the hands of provincial politicians.
The future of Canada depends more than ever on new bold and visionary national leadership that understands both the poetry and practice of politics. We need inspiration to revive our collective imagination once again, and pursue national initiatives for the benefit of all Canadians.
The 1995 inter-provincial Agreement on Internal Trade – intended to reduce barriers to goods, services, and people – is so weak that we are now more disconnected and dysfunctional than the European Union.
At the same time as we rebuild the capacity of the public service and our elected representatives to better serve the national interest, certain policy areas will require some institutional distance from politicians.