Dear Prime Minister Carney,
The convergence of this moment and your leadership gives us a rare chance to break free from the status quo. We cannot let this golden opportunity to make Canada a beacon for the world slip through our fingers.
Like a championship hockey team, Team Canada Inc. has all the right ingredients – talent, capital and resources – to win big on the global stage.
As Canada’s head coach, we’re counting on you to channel the wisdom and boldness of our hockey legends, making the tough calls so we can finally deliver on Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s century-old promise that the 20th century would be the century of Canada. That can be true for the century we’re in now, if we avoid getting stuck in the past with outdated technology.
Where do we play? Fossil fuels are fading, even as their lobbyists grow louder, while clean industries — renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, clean AI, electrification and modular construction – are rising with unstoppable momentum.
In electro-economics, the more you build, the cheaper it gets; in petro-economics, the more you extract, the higher the cost. Do we invest in the future or cling to the past? Like the Great One, we need to skate to where the puck is going.
Who do we play with? Will we keep relying on a single, increasingly unreliable trading partner for three-quarters of our exports? Or will we reach for opportunity by diversifying with traditional allies and markets like China and India, where nearly 40% of global growth will occur by 2050? It’s time for some bold deal-making to set up more productive games with our rivals in the spirit of Alan Eagleson’s 1972 hockey Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union.
Who owns Team Canada Inc.? Do we settle for branch-plant status and domestic oligopolies, or do we become masters in our own house – with an inclusive wealth fund, stronger support for co-ops and employee ownership, and a strategy to scale Canadian champions? Denmark, with just six million people, is home to global leaders in cleantech, shipping, beer and pharma. We’re not too small or too poor – our AAA credit rating and $14 trillion in institutional capital say otherwise. Let’s play with our elbows up like the legendary Gordie Howe.
How do we stop scoring on ourselves? Our slow-moving bureaucracy and risk aversion have stalled $89 billion in clean economy funds and cost us billions more in trade barriers, red tape, wildfires and fragmented energy systems. It’s time to move fast, break the right things and unite as one economy – not 13 – while ensuring that Indigenous communities have real equity in our future. We can’t afford to put Steve Smith (who scored the most infamous goal on his own net in the 1986 Smythe Division final) on the ice.
How do we keep our skills sharp? Denmark invests 1.7% of GDP in active labour market policies – six times more than Canada – helping workers retool for the jobs of tomorrow. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development puts us near the bottom of advanced economies. Are we ready to invest in our people and win, just as Scotty Bowman always did with his teams?
Let’s seize this chance and play to win – because the 21st century can still be Canada’s century, if we have the courage to skate hard to where the puck is going, pass boldly and shoot for the stars.
Toby Heaps is co-founder and publisher of Corporate Knights.
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