Business Leaders Elect David P. O’Brien
as Chairman of the Business Council on National Issues
The Business Council on National Issues has elected David P. O’Brien as its new Chairman. Mr. O’Brien, who is Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Canadian Pacific Limited, succeeds A. L. Flood, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CIBC. Mr. Flood now assumes the post of Honorary Chairman. The Business Council on National Issues is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization that is the vehicle for Canadian chief executive participation in national and global issues. The member companies of the BCNI administer close to $1.9 trillion in assets, have a yearly turnover of more than $500 billion, employ about one in ten working Canadians and are responsible for a majority of Canadian private sector investment, exports, research and development and training. “I am honoured to take on the responsibility of chairing the BCNI at what I believe is a critical time for Canada’s economy,” said Mr. O’Brien. “We have taken on […]
Business Leaders Launch Major Initiativeto Overcome Barriers to Innovation and Growth
The chief executives of 150 leading Canadian corporations have launched a major initiative aimed at identifying and overcoming the barriers that are holding back innovation and threaten Canada’s growth in the knowledge-based global economy of the 21st century. The Canada Global Leadership Initiative was approved yesterday at the Annual General Meeting of the Business Council on National Issues (BCNI) in Toronto. To be completed over the next 12 months, the project will be directed by the BCNI, but involve a wide range of advisors and partners across Canada and around the world. “Our goal goes beyond simply making Canada a better place to live, to work and to do business. We want to help create in this country a uniquely attractive home base for competitive and growing global enterprises,” said David P. O’Brien, Chairman, President and Chief Executive of Canadian Pacific Limited and the newly elected Chairman of the BCNI. […]
Business Leadership and Public Policy
Building on our Strengths
Thank you and good morning. It gives me great pleasure today to carry on a proud tradition. The Business Council on National Issues is recognized as the most influential voice of Canada’s business leaders, and that influence is due in great measure to the priority that all of us and our predecessors have given to its work. We all have important responsibilities to our own shareholders, customers and employees. The work we do together at the BCNI falls within those responsibilities, but also goes beyond them. Public policy plays a key role in our ability to grow our companies, but it also represents a field in which business leadership is too often lacking. The BCNI gives us a way to do something for Canada, not just through the activities of our companies, but as individuals. The BCNI’s reputation and record owes a great deal to those who have gone before […]
Reflections on Canada and on
Canadian Identity and Unity
I am pleased to add my warmest congratulations to the citizens of Newfoundland and Labrador on this historic occasion, and I salute Premier Tobin and the organizers of this conference for assembling here in St. John’s such a fine array of the province’s citizenry and guests from across Canada. As we heard so eloquently this morning, we are here to celebrate 50 years of Newfoundland’s partnership in what I believe is the most successful country in the world — 50 years that have not been always bright or easy for the people of this province. But 50 years of steady progress with profound adjustments along the way have prepared Newfoundland and Labrador for a more certain and prosperous future. I share the general optimism in the future expressed by John Crosbie, Ed Roberts and Peter Neary this morning — a future that will be shaped by new forces and new ways of doing things — but […]
Business Leaders say Budget too Quick to Spend,
too Slow to cut Taxes, too Risky on Debt
By giving too much emphasis to new spending, Finance Minister Paul Martin’s 1999 budget missed an important opportunity to spur growth and to protect Canadians from an uncertain global economy, says the Business Council on National Issues (BCNI). The Council, which is comprised of the chief executive officers of 150 leading Canadian enterprises, says the greatest disappointment in the 1999 federal budget is two-fold: the government’s failure to tackle more aggressively the country’s single greatest vulnerability — the still dangerously high public debt — and Mr. Martin’s decision to deny Canadian taxpayers a more equitable share of the federal surplus they have financed. “Canada is far better off today than it was five years ago, but the economy is slowing, unemployment remains too high, our productivity growth has been weak and our debt load remains staggering at a time when the global outlook is very worrying,” says BCNI President and Chief Executive, Thomas d’Aquino. […]
Tax cut Delay will not Pay
The federal government spent more than a quarter of a century racking up deficits and debt and boosting taxes. Finance Minister Paul Martin would have you believe that it will take another generation to bring tax rates back down. This seems timid stuff from the man who managed to turn a $42 billion annual shortfall into a surplus in just four years. He succeeded only because taxpayers shouldered most of the burden, and now they deserve to have that load lightened as quickly as possible. The ‘balanced’ progress in this fiscal year — a $300 million tax cut and $5.4 billion in new spending — is not an encouraging sign. One of the more misleading tables buried in the fine print of the 1999 budget includes this curious description of how the federal deficit was slain and surpluses came sloshing in. Since 1993/94, the fiscal year in which the Liberal government took office, it […]
Business Leaders Call for new Worldwide
Trade Talks to Head off Protectionism
and Restore Global Growth
The Business Council on National Issues (BCNI) has advised Prime Minister Jean ChrǸtien that the best way to restore global growth and to head off a new round of barriers to trade in Canada’s key export markets is to press for ambitious multilateral negotiations on freer trade and investment. Financial turmoil has fanned public anxiety about global economic integration, but promoting faster growth through still freer trade is the best response. “The global community must avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, when a wave of competitive devaluations and beggar-thy-neighbor policies simply added to the worldwide damage,” the BCNI says in a Memorandum to the Prime Minister entitled Confronting Global Economic Uncertainty: International Trade and Investment Priorities for Canada. “Even the prospect of broadly-based negotiations could help Canada and its trading partners to cope with today’s financial and trade uncertainties and the resulting protectionist pressures,” the memorandum says. “There is […]
Confronting Global Economic Uncertainty:
International Trade and Investment
Priorities for Canada
Dear Prime Minister, When the Business Council on National Issues (BCNI) wrote to you last September, it was to offer our advice on fiscal policy at a time of turmoil and rising uncertainty in the global economy. We urged greater attention to reducing the public debt, tight control of spending and commitment to broadly based tax reduction. We were heartened by your early responses, especially your commitment of the surpluses last year and this year to debt reduction. We look forward to further positive developments in your government’s upcoming budget. In this memorandum addressed to you and your Cabinet colleagues, we are pleased to offer our views on another critical element in the growth of Canada’s economy — the matter of international trade and investment policy. As you know, global financial turmoil has fanned public anxiety about worldwide economic integration. The overcapacity and weak demand which exists in many industries throughout the […]
Meeting the Climate Change Challenge
Just over one year ago, the federal government signed an historic agreement in Kyoto, Japan that commits Canada to reduce significantly emissions of the gases that are thought to be contributing to global climate change. That agreement would require us to reduce our emissions by six percent from 1990 levels by the period 2008 to 2012. However, 1990 was a recession year in Canada. Our emissions since then have grown considerably (by more than 13 percent as of 1996), largely as a result of economic expansion, population growth and exports of energy-intensive products. Many of these factors are likely to push our emissions even higher as we approach the commitment period of 2008 to 2012. In fact, current government estimates suggest that the Kyoto commitment in reality represents a 25 percent reduction in emissions from what they would otherwise be by that time. The Business Council on National Issues (BCNI) […]
The 1999 Federal Budget: Making the Right Choices
Dear Minister, Three months ago, the Business Council on National Issues (BCNI) wrote to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to offer recommendations for ensuring Canada’s prosperity amid growing global economic uncertainty. In particular, we suggested that the government should exercise prudence by paying down the public debt more rapidly and should improve Canada’s competitiveness through broadly based personal income tax cuts. We also suggested that the need to achieve a meaningful degree of debt and tax reduction in an uncertain environment would leave no room at all for new discretionary spending initiatives. The BCNI has been far from idle since. In early October, we fleshed out our proposals for significant tax relief, not just in the next budget but over the next seven years. We suggested that keeping a firm lid on spending would allow more than $3 billion in tax cuts in the 1999 budget out of a surplus we […]
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