Marching Towards Prosperity:
the National and Global Challenge
Chairman David O’Brien, fellow members of the Business Council on National Issues. When we last met as the full membership of the BCNI, it was in April of this year on the occasion of the Council’s CEO Summit 2000. You will remember that following 12 months of intensive work, we tabled a number of statements, studies and working papers. Our central policy statement, Global Champion or Falling Star? The Choice that Canada Must Make, was well-crafted and balanced, but frank and hard-hitting. Our recommendations were many in number but there was one overarching theme: government policies and business strategies had to adapt more quickly — much more quickly, to the imperatives of the global economy if Canada was to achieve higher growth levels, finance social needs, and halt the loss of our head offices and brightest minds. Our initiative received headline treatment in the country’s dailies and broadcast media and a remarkable […]
MAKING CANADA A WINNER:
PROGRESS AND CHALLENGES
Good morning and welcome to our Autumn General Meeting. The last time we all gathered together was in April, when we turned our Annual General Meeting into the CEO Summit 2000. At that time, we were joined by 150 other leaders from the private, public and non-profit sectors to discuss the work of our Canada Global Leadership Initiative. A great deal has happened since, and Tom will talk about that in more detail in a few minutes. But first, I would just ask you to think back to our decision to launch the Leadership Initiative in early 1999. At that point, the Asian financial crisis was a very recent memory and the short-term economic prospects were far from certain. Federal surpluses were still a novelty. The first minor personal tax cuts had been dished out, but with little enthusiasm. Corporate tax cuts were not even on the radar screen. The […]
Business Leaders say Federal
Economic Statement lays Solid
Foundation for Sustainable Growth
The acceleration of tax and debt reduction in federal Finance Minister Paul Martin’s Economic Statement today, combined with his government’s continuing emphasis on support for research, innovation and entrepreneurship, puts Canada firmly on the track toward sustained growth, says the Business Council on National Issues (BCNI). In 1999, the BCNI, made up of the chief executive officers of 150 leading Canadian enterprises, launched its Canada Global Leadership Initiative with the goal of making Canada the best place in the world in which to live, to work, to invest and to grow. At the resulting CEO Summit 2000 in April, the Council’s member chief executive officers noted that only by making the right moves on economic policy could Canada hope to achieve its social dreams. “Taxation, spending and debt reduction remain the three legs of the fiscal stool. We need to make sure that each of those legs supports our common […]
New Beginnings and a Stronger Foundation
Canada and Japan have an historic opportunity to more fully develop a long-standing and successful relationship — to build upon an already strong foundation and capitalize on the potential that technology brings to 21st century trade, investment and economic activity. Following on a very successful Team Canada Mission to Japan in September of 1999, and at the request of Prime Ministers Chrétien and Obuchi, the Business Council on National Issues (BCNI) and its Japanese counterpart, the Keidanren, agreed to conduct studies on ways and means to inject dynamism into the Canada-Japan trade and investment relationship. Both studies came to the same overall conclusion. After decades of relative success in a rather comfortable, complementary relationship, our trade and investment patterns essentially have become stagnant. The value of bilateral trade flows over the past decade has grown very little, especially when compared with our overall trade picture. Bilateral investment flows have increased, but remain […]
Risk and Reward: Creating a Canadian Culture of Innovation
Risk and Reward: Creating a Canadian Culture of Innovation
Winning the Human Race: Developing and Retaining World Class Talent
Winning the Human Race: Developing and Retaining World Class Talent
Magnetic North: Powering Canada’s Growth
Magnetic North: Powering Canada’s Growth
Education and Training, Immigration
and Taxes are all Key to Building
Canada’s Human Advantage
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 […]
Forging a Dynamic Canada: Japan Trade and Investment
Strategy for the Third Millenium
Forging a Dynamic Canada: Japan Trade and Investment Strategy for the Third Millenium
Global Champion or Falling Star? Canada Must Lead to
Succeed in the new Economy
Global Champion or Falling Star? Canada Must Lead to Succeed in the new Economy
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