Northern Edge: How Canadians Can Triumph in the Global Economy

David Robinson is an associate professor of economics at Laurentian
University.

D’Aquino is the President and CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief
Executives (CCCE), an organization composed of the chief executives of
150 leading Canadian enterprises. Stewart-Patterson is Senior Vice
President of Policy. Founded in 1976 as the Business Council on National
Issues, the CCCE is proud of its influential role in most of the major
policy developments in Canada over the past 25 years.

Knowing that the authors are paid lobbyists for the business community,
potential readers might assume that Northern Edge is pushing a business
agenda. It is, of course, but D’Aquino and Stewart-Patterson have
produced a surprisingly balanced book, a compendium of the policy issues
that concern thoughtful businesspeople and thoughtful Canadians in
general. Schools, health care, nursing shortages, the pay scales for the
public service, free trade, taxes, transparent government, and
sustainability are just a few of the issues discussed. The authors claim
to believe strongly in “caring and sharing.” They don’t “press
Canadians to embrace unbridled capitalism or to make themselves more
like Americans.” Instead, they challenge the notion that Canadians can
compete globally only by becoming more like Americans, and they
emphasize Canada’s distinctive advantages.

Does this growing appreciation of Canada’s virtues signal a
Canadianization of the business mind? It may. Northern Edge suggests
that while the business class has increasingly set the national agenda,
it has also come to terms with Canada’s successful and very moderate
social democracy.

Because the book was written during the last six months of 2000, there
is no mention of terrorism, the World Trade Center, or Iraq. The absence
is not only a relief, it is a strength, because it allows the authors to
bring together the threads of a policy discussion that evolved over the
1990s without the demeaning and demented posturing that characterized
the post-9/11 period. References to Seattle seem almost quaint.

Although there is nothing new here, the level of discussion is high,
the writing is clear, and the tone is inclusive. Northern Edge is the
best of the many business-oriented “Whither Canada?” books of the
last decade.