The Canadian Century. Brian Lee Crowley

      The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. We acknowledge the support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative.

      We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Pub- lishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

      Text design and electronic formatting: Marijke Friesen

      The Macdonald-Laurier Institute for Public Policy

      exists to make poor-quality public policy in Ottawa unacceptable to Canadians and their political and opinion leaders by proposing thoughtful alternatives through non-partisan and independent research and commentary.

      MLI’s activities include:

      Initiating and conducting research identifying current and emerging economic and public policy issues facing Canadians, including, but not limited to, research into defence and security, foreign policy, immigration, economic and fiscal policy, Canada–US relations, regulatory, regional development, social policy and aboriginal affairs;

      Investigating and analysing the full range of options for public and private sector responses to the issues identified and to act as a catalyst for informed debate on those options;

      Communicating the conclusions of its research to a national audience in a clear, non-partisan way;

      Sponsoring or organizing conferences, meetings, seminars, lectures, training programs and publications using all media of communication (including without restriction, the electronic media), for the purposes of achieving these objects;

      Providing research services on public policy issues, or other facilities, for institutions, corporations, agencies and individuals, including departments and agencies of Canadian governments at the federal, provincial, regional and municipal levels, on such terms as may be mutually agreed, provided that the research is in furtherance of these objects.

      The authors of this work have worked independently and are solely responsible for the views presented here. The opinions are not necessarily those of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute for Public Policy, its Directors or Supporters.

      preface

      This book would not exist without two organizations. Appropriately, one is American and the other Canadian.

      The first is Liberty Fund, Inc., of Indianapolis, Indiana. Liberty Fund is a foundation dedicated to ensuring that the intellectual case for human freedom is examined and understood around the world. The three authors of this book had the enormous good fortune to be participants in a Liberty Fund colloquium on Liberty and Public Choice that took place in Ottawa, Ontario, in March 2009.

      A number of discussions around that colloquium table stimulated us to think more deeply about how Canada had changed over the course of the 1990s. Moreover, Canadian Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, was equally a participant at the Ottawa event and his knowledge of the American fiscal situation drew us into further discussions of how the paths being followed by Canada and the US, respectively, were diverging in Canada’s favour. We realized that neither Canadians nor Americans had any inkling of how remarkably their relative positions had changed in recent years.

      One immediate result of this fortuitous meeting of minds was the co-authoring of an op-ed by two of the present authors (Clemens and Veldhuis) along with Edwards. The piece, which appeared in the Washington Post, compared various aspects of Canadian and American economic performance over the last two decades. The disbelief of readers on both sides of the border when presented with the facts underlined for us the perennial quality of popular prejudices; they endure long after the reality that gave rise to them has been reshaped by events.

      The writing of the op-ed forced the authors to examine in greater detail what actually happened in the two countries over the 1990s with specific emphasis on Canada’s energetic and visionary reforms, contrasted with America’s manifest difficulties in wrestling its fiscal and entitlement problems to the ground. The combination of the conference and the writing of the op-ed convinced the authors that these very different cross-border circumstances created an historic opportunity for Canada and motivated us to speak out to ensure that, if Canada fails to capitalize on this opportunity, it will not be out of ignorance. We are indebted to Liberty Fund for having brought us together, and to the other participants who helped us to understand how little Canadians and Americans really understood one another.

      The other organization to which this book owes its existence is the new Macdonald-Laurier Institute for Public Policy in Ottawa. MLI (“Emily” to its friends) is a brand new institute aiming to fill a glaring gap in Canada’s democratic infrastructure: the absence of a proper broadly based think tank in the national capital, talking to the national political personnel, the national media, and the national electorate about policy issues that matter to the Canadian nation. MLI is equally dedicated to the proposition that the founders and early architects of Canada endowed us with something of inestimable worth: the institutions and values on which a country might be built in what was formerly British North America.

      As the three authors carried on the conversation begun at the Liberty Fund event, we began to place that discussion in the context of what we knew about those origins of our country, origins that might be distant in time but that left an indelible stamp on our institutions and our character as a people. As we teased out the changes that had produced such good results for Canada over the past two decades, we were quickly drawn to see how closely those changes mirrored the plan for Canada of one of our early prime ministers, Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

      Thus was born MLI’s Canadian Century project. You hold in your hand the first product of that project, but we hope it will be only one of many as the numerous fine minds associated with MLI begin to expand on the basic themes we have established in this book. Over the coming months and years the new institute will explore in more detail how smart policy in Canada can help to speed our country’s return to Laurier’s plan and the Canadian century he believed lay within our grasp. We want to thank MLI, its board of directors and supporters for