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Canada’s homegrown brainpower key to economic success

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Canada’s homegrown brainpower the key to economic success, says Goodale
By Julia M. Smith
September 8, 2005, Pan Pacific Vancouver

Our country's success will hinge on the quality of its brainpower, says Goodale

"Canadians have cause to be confident, but not cocky," said federal Minister of Finance Ralph Goodale at a Vancouver Board of Trade event sponsored by Coast Capital Savings.

Goodale began his address as a bearer of good news, citing that B.C. topped the nation last year with a growth rate of 3.9 per cent, and forecasting that Vancouver's economy alone will grow by 3.3 per cent this year.

"Your success is good reason for all Canadians to celebrate," said Goodale, adding that his ministry will be building on more than 12 consecutive years of steady economic expansion in Canada since the early 1990s — one of the best periods of sustained economic success in the nation's history.

But the minister warned against taking these successes for granted and instead, encouraged Canadians to continue brainstorming ways to ensure that Canada is sufficiently agile, innovative and well-positioned in global supply chains.

"In this welter of changes and challenges, I believe our Canadian goal and our 'agenda' must be an increasingly smart and sophisticated economy with the wherewithal to compete at the high end of markets," he said. "Our government and all Canadians have worked too hard and come too far over this past decade to risk having that success frittered away."

Goodale called for the creation of a basic frame for growth, including investments in key fields like public infrastructure, homegrown brainpower and the creation of ideas and their commercialization into new products, to propel our economy into the future.

"It's not a matter of personal success and satisfaction — in this knowledge-based, technology-driven, highly skilled and intensely competitive world, our country's success will hinge on the quality of Canadian brainpower," Goodale said.

Canada has one of the best learning records of any major economy. Among G-7 countries, it has the highest proportion of people with some form of post-secondary education, and Canadian high school students have, on average, the best scores in reading and the second best in math and science.

"The debate about learning should not be about how much money gets recycled from one order of government to the next, but rather how much net new money each order of government is actually investing into education," said Goodale.

He concluded, "Higher education. A culture of innovation. Strong public infrastructure. Clear framework principles. All to what end? To keep Canada successful."

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