An Agenda for an Inclusive and Innovative Canada - Part 1

Canada isn't working as it should be, but better is possible

I don't have a blueprint for a society in which all of our problems are forever solved-no one does. As Ostrom said, there are no panaceas, only possibilities. I don't believe in utopia, but I can imagine a more hopeful future where our problems get more interesting and complex-a complexity befitting the tangled and unpredictable world we live in - Astra Taylor, The Age of Insecurity

Here’s what I know: There are innumerable possible futures. I know that we each get some say in which future we’ll collectively have, and a chance to help build it. I know that every tenth of a degree of warming we prevent, every centimeter of sea level rise we avoid, every increasingly unnatural disaster we avert, every species we save, every bit of nature we protect and restore, matters. I know that our efforts add up, and that our fates are intertwined. Averting climate catastrophe, this is the work of our lifetimes. So, go where there is need and where your heart can find a home. And when it all feels too much, return to this simple guiding question: What if we act as if we love the future? - Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, What if we get it right?

Over the past few weeks, I have written a few pieces that point to the need for a vision of Canada’s economy and society. I feel it is important to have this vision to provide intellectual scaffolding for policymaking. We live in a complex world with complex challenges, and any policy choice will come with trade-offs. A coherent vision helps provide the guide rails to understand and make those choices across multiple interlocking policy domains.

Along with having a vision, I also believe that as a policy community, we need to get more detailed in our analysis and recommendations. We need to get into the weeds. We should get specific about the policy levers that we need to pull and how different levels of government fit into that picture. I have certainly been as at fault as any in my past work in not getting enough into the mechanics of change in past reports.

Over the next few weeks, I want to use this newsletter to flesh out my thinking on both fronts. Today, I will try to articulate some of the foundations that I think a more inclusive and innovative Canada needs to rest on. Then, next time, I’ll expand on a few different pillars of what achieving that could involve.

I hope that you get some value from this. If you’d like to chat more about any part of it, please reach out! I’d love to hear your feedback.

Foundations of an Inclusive, Innovative Canada

Photo by Redd Francisco on Unsplash

Building an Economy That Works for People - Abundance, not Scarcity. Security, not Insecurity

Political types like myself tend to talk far more about the principles of freedom, equality, and democracy than security, and I've come to believe this is a strategic mistake. Security, particularly the material security of reliable access to food, water, shelter, medical care, welfare, protection from violence, and a habitable environment, must be understood as foundational to freedom, equality, and democracy, not an afterthought. Contra Hobbes, freedom does not exist in opposition to security but, rather, is one of material security's most important rewards. The security of having our needs met allows us to have real autonomy and creative agency in the world - Astra Taylor, The Age of Insecurity

We live in a world of unparalleled material abundance. Yet, we also live in a world of shocking scarcity and insecurity.

• Scarcity of food - with record numbers of Canadians using food banks

• Scarcity of water - with 29 Indigenous communities still suffering from boil water advisories and with droughts worsening Canada’s water security

• Scarcity of shelter - with a gap of 4.4 million affordable homes

• Scarcity of medical care - with more than 6 million Canadians without a family doctor

• Scarcity of welfare - with 1.6 million Canadians with disabilities living below the poverty line

• Scarcity of safety - with more than 4-in-10 women experiencing some form of intimate partner violence in their lifetimes and with transgender Canadians more likely to have experienced violence since the age of 15 than cisgender Canadians

• Scarcity of environmental safety - with different parts of Canada already seeing heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and flooding caused by climate change

I’ll add too, as I don’t think it is irrelevant, scarcity of geopolitical security - with Canadian governments and businesses facing repeated cyber attacks, among other threats.

And that is just in Canada, where we have it better off than so many others worldwide.

This just isn’t good enough.

We need to build an economy and society that reverses this scarcity and provides real, tangible security to everyone. This is morally and economically necessary. Hungry, sick people don’t make productive workers if productivity is what we care most about (which, of course, it shouldn’t be).

Any vision of Canada over the next 5, 10, or 15 years needs to have abundance and security at its heart. We need to build towards a Canada that can provide for all its people and utilizes its great wealth and the ingenuity of its people to ensure that everyone is provided for and everyone can flourish.

Unleash the power of innovation for good & counteract the harms

Rather than accruing benefits only to a small, socially elite group of innovators, a truly modern innovation economy must seek to create more plural, more equitable opportunities that are accessible beyond major research institutions and massive tech corporations, that prioritise regeneration over extraction, and that uplift and empower people and communities in their diversity - Rachel Coldicutt and Matt Dowse, What good is innovation if it doesn’t work for everyone?

Innovation is a powerful force that can be used to create abundance. To paraphrase Daniel Susskind, the universe of intangible ideas is unimaginably vast and capable of providing growth beyond the material constraints of the world by providing more and more productive ways of using Earth’s finite resources.

How we nurture the ideas and innovations that enable that growth matters, especially because innovation can also be a powerful force for harm.

Despite the boosterism that often comes with the term, innovation itself is value-neutral. Innovation can be used to create a prosperous, equitable future. However, too often it drives inequality instead, with the gains going to owners of capital and highly paid R&D staff rather than diffusing to society at large. Innovation and technology can be used to herald a revolution in drug discovery - helping save untold lives. Innovation and technology can also be used to enable human rights abuses, costing untold lives.

Innovation should be foundational to a future vision of Canada. However, it can’t be based on past approaches that have taken it for granted that providing enough inputs into innovation (research, talent, funding) means that good things will result. We’ve seen the reverse of that too often to know that isn’t the case.

New approaches to innovation need to intentionally tip the scale towards outcomes beneficial to Canada’s economy and society and encourage the types of innovation (and business models) that yield tangible benefits to Canada.

Unlocking the Potential of Place

There are so many ways in which we can learn from each other, and so many reasons that we should. But there also are many ways in which places, as much as people, hold the key to unlocking opportunity. Education is the beating heart of the infrastructure of opportunity, but place—where you live—is the body that holds it. Place frames everything else. It has the greatest impact on an individual’s educational and economic opportunity and ability to build wealth. It can hold someone back from finding opportunity or provide a direct pathway to it. For all these reasons, unlocking the potential of place is one of the greatest imperatives of the twenty-first century - Fiona Hill, There is Nothing For You Here

Place matters. Perhaps more so in the vastness of Canada than in most other countries.

The quality of education, the accessibility of healthcare, the variety of jobs - all are predicated on where you live. So are innovation outcomes - with fascinating work from the US by Raj Chetty and team demonstrating how where you live matters for your likelihood to patent an invention, thanks to whether you are exposed to inventors through mentorship and role models.

Canada is built on very diverse places. While they may face many shared challenges and opportunities, many will be unique to them. This can easily be seen in the varied economic recoveries of Canada’s largest cities since January 2022 using Statistics Canada’s Real-time Business Conditions Index.

Source: Statistics Canada Real-time Business Conditions Index

We have to put more attention to how we unlock the potential of place. While we certainly need to work on how we both bring the country together - for example, removing barriers to trade between provinces that serve to fragment our economy - we also need to do more to identify the “local and ‘mirco’ underpinnings of ‘macro’ performance issues” to use Mark Muro’s phrase.

A vision of an inclusive and innovative Canada needs to not only be big picture, but demonstrate tangible connections to real people’s lives and communities - shaping how things are in the day-to-day of Canadians. Peole need to feel and see a difference in their lives - and that is based on a real understanding of place.

What’s Next?

If those then - an economy that works for people, innovation for good, and unlocking the potential of place - are three foundations of an inclusive and innovative Canada - then there is a lot that needs to be built on top of that. My starting list includes:

• Recreating state capacity

• The role of industrial strategy - including in the care economy

• Build, build, build - or why tangibles matter more than ever even in an intangible economy

• Embracing Canada’s global role

• Furthering intentional innovation

• A climate-ready Canada

• Worker- and human-centric tech adoption

I am by no means claiming that these foundations or pillars are definitive - I am certain there is lots I could or should have been talking about. They are, however, a start for me to flesh out some of my thinking on these topics. Next time I’ll begin to do just that with the list above.