New year, new decade, new vision. Let’s call it 2020 vision, and let’s kick the decade off with a commitment from government that a 2020 vision will be just that: a game plan that begins with focus and clarity and continues with a fact- and data-driven set of initiatives that will create the landscape upon which business and the economy can prosper.
More fog and myopia is not going to help anyone in Canada. But, at this point, 2019 is departing wreathed in both.
The federal Liberal government’s throne speech to open Canada’s 43rd Parliament is a good example. It trotted out an inventory of populist talking points bearing large price
tags to tackle such issues as climate change and pharmacare.
Largely missing, however, were any meaningful details of ways to cultivate the economic growth Canada needs to pay for more government spending and a heavier taxpayer debt burden.
In B.C., we also have a new layer of opacity to muddle through in the form of UNDRIP.
The province’s formal adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples could lay the foundation for reaping the mutual economic benefits generated from a dynamic fusion of the province’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous entrepreneurial talents.
But it could also mire the province in more complex legal and jurisdictional battles that will increase uncertainty and decrease B.C.’s appeal as a place for business and investment.
Even legal experts are unclear on what B.C.’s adoption of UNDRIP will mean on a host of fronts or how it will harmonize with the rest of the country when the federal government also formally adopts the declaration.
The view from the tail end of 2019, with a weak minority government nominally in charge of the country and major unresolved regional issues dividing Canada politically and economically, is that the chances of a 2020 vision emerging to unite the country and stimulate real economic growth are extremely thin.
