Education and Training, Immigration and Taxes are all Key to Building Canada’s Human Advantage

May 30, 2000

Investing in education, broadening access to lifelong learning, more effective targeting of government programs, easing the immigration of people with scarce skills and cutting taxes are all ingredients in the recipe for building Canada’s human advantage in the global economy.

That is the conclusion of Winning the Human Race: Developing and Retaining World Class Talent, a working paper released today by the Business Council on National Issues as part of its continuing Canada Global Leadership Initiative.

“Canada’s well-educated workforce is a competitive advantage today, but we can and must do more to enable all Canadians to succeed in the knowledge economy of the 21st century,” said the BCNI’s President and Chief Executive, Thomas d’Aquino. As Finance Minister Paul Martin put it in his latest budget, skills and knowledge ‘are the meeting place between social and economic policy — the best means available to us to narrow the gap between rich and poor’.

“The challenge of building Canada’s human advantage is complex. It cannot be met by governments alone,” Mr. d’Aquino added. “All of us, in the public, private and non-profit sectors alike, must find new and better ways of working together if we want to achieve the ambitious social goals that Canadians share.”

The skills and motivation of Canadians will play a key role in moving Canada towards a culture of innovation and in making Canada the destination of choice for investment in leading-edge operations. These are the subjects of two further working papers also released today by the BCNI.

Risk and Reward: Creating a Canadian Culture of Innovation acknowledges that fostering research is important to success in the new economy. But it suggests that the real challenge is to get more of the good ideas Canadians generate out of the lab and turn them into successful global businesses. If Canada wants to see vibrant growth in jobs and incomes, it must encourage people and money to shift rapidly toward new and more productive pursuits and must improve the rewards for those willing to take risks.

Magnetic North: Powering Canada’s Growth draws on an internal survey of the BCNI’s member chief executives that looks at what factors are most important to business investment decisions and how Canada’s strengths and weaknesses stack up against those criteria. It also examines emerging challenges for Canada within the global environment for trade and investment. And it highlights some domestic policy issues that Canada must address if it wants to convince Canadian and foreign investors alike that this country should be the location of choice for successful global enterprises.

The BCNI, composed of the chief executive officers of 150 of Canada’s leading enterprises, launched the Canada Global Leadership Initiative in 1999 with the goal of making Canada the best place in the world in which to live, to work, to invest and to grow.

Twelve months of research and consultation culminated in the CEO Summit 2000 held in Toronto in April, which brought together 250 leading figures in business, government, academia and the non-profit sectors. The Summit galvanized public debate about the need for more rapid change in the public and private sectors alike. The working papers released today are the BCNI’s latest contribution to this continuing discussion. The first working paper, Going for Gold: Winning Corporate Strategies and Their Impact on Canada, was released at the Summit.

A non-partisan and not-for-profit organization, the BCNI is the voice of Canadian chief executives on public policy issues in Canada and globally. Its members head companies representing every major sector of the Canadian economy and are responsible for a significant majority of Canada’s private sector investment, exports, training and research and development. With about 1.3 million employees, member companies administer in excess of $2.1 trillion in assets and have an annual turnover of more than $500 billion.