Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Politics of Money, a new podcast from the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy, explores how public finance, politics, and institutions shape the world we live in.
Hosted by IFSD's Sahir Khan and Kevin Page, Canada’s first Parliamentary Budget Officer, our podcast blends deep subject-matter expertise with accessible conversation.
A trusted place where listeners can follow the money – and learn the real stories behind Canada’s big policy choices.
Welcome to the Politics of Money, the official podcast of the IFSD.
We're also the three bald men of public finance.
I am trying to compensate by growing hair on my face.
Um, I see no one else join me in making the adjustments.
So we're coming up to Canada Day, Canada 159.
And as we would, you know, like to do with the IFSD is to look look at Canada by the
numbers.
And for those of you who are on so our web pages or social media through IFSD.
We put out this kind of a chart
to show, you know, how does Canada stack up with respect to its peers.
And I think it's really easy to get lost in some bad headline numbers that, you know,
shake people's confidence
in the country.
I'll just say that I think start by saying that, you know, Canada's awesome, especially
after the World Cup win to launch us into the group of sixteen.
That's just proof.
And so thanks to Ian Wayne, we have a set of metrics that were developed
to kind of compare Canada to the OECD peers.
And the OECD is the kind of the club of the thirty richest countries and a group of
countries that have, of course the United States, but also lots of countries that look
like Canada.
So a really good reference group to kind of compare how we're doing a little bit of North
America, Europe, elsewhere.
But but kind of a good group for us to kind of say, all right, so so where are we?
How do these headline numbers that we we see in the media and in Parliament, you know,
stack up with the reality of how Canada's really doing?
so as always, I have Kevin Page, president CEO of the IFSD, and Mostafa Askari, chief
economist of the IFSD, to help kind of unpack this for Canada one fifty one.
Kevin, um that graphic that Ian helped put together,
The headline numbers, what what story do they tell you overall about Canada, how we're
doing at 159?
Well, happy birthday, everybody.
159 that is an accomplishment in its own right.
I think um the headline stories, I think we have lots to be proud of it's kind of a bit of
a mixed story.
I think in terms of the the stuff that really matters, the fundamentals.
How do Canadians feel
about their lives, about the economy, you know, about our educational system, about our
health system, about the labour market.
Some of those big fundamentals.
we're in a good place and Canadians feel good about that in terms of life satisfaction and
life expectancy, those big indicators.
Though there's no question, I think Doctor Askari probably wanna get into this as well,
that um we're in a difficult moment.
And we're showing resilience, but the economy is slow.
Picking up Kevin's points, the Canada we have and the Canada we want depends on a solid
economic foundation.
And and things, you know, geopolitically are a little rough right now.
So what does Canada have to do to make sure that we have that foundation for a prosperous
Um inclusive successful Canada.
I think I mean this is not an easy question to answer because there seems to be many
factors involved in this.
But
but I think one of the things that I think we have been looking at and we have been
discussing is the fact that it takes a long time for us to build.
And whatever the reason, underlying reason for that is, that's a separate.
separate issue, but it is definitely the case that every project that we we think about,
it takes a long time.
Some of it because of the rules and regulations, some of it because of the the deals with
the provinces and other other organizations that we have to figure out.
But at the end of the day, if we cannot build, if we cannot uh sort of overcome those
obstacles, then we are not going to be growing very fast or at the level that we
we would like to see.
I think we we all know, for example, that we need investment in Canada.
And uh we also know that Canadian companies are sitting on a huge amount of cash and
they're not investing.
Why are why aren't they investing?
I think there are uncertainties, there are issues in terms of what they can get done
quickly and
Certainly uncertainty that exists right now out because of the issues in in the US and
globally, th those will affect their decisions.
But also there are all do we have issues internally as to whether the those kind of
investment will actually lead to something fruitful for the companies
quickly that they can they can approach that to here.
Okay.
Sahir Your parents um came from another country.
Yes.
And um
They came here, they built, they raised their family.
Um you know, and you know, Mostafa came from another country, my grandparents came from
another country.
Like how do you from that perspective, how like like how and your dad has is left us, but
like how how do you how would your dad feel about number 159?
And I his decision to come to Canada.
You know, I I think he my parents came from India.
actually met in the United States, spent a decade there, and then and then and then made a
bet to come to Canada, this young country really getting going in the in the early 60s
after spending the 50s in the United States.
I think he'd be incredibly proud of what Canada's achieved as a as a country.
I don't I think that he was a capitalist.
He believed in in capitalism a way to reallocate to allocate resources efficiently.
But he also believed in balance, that you had to have a country that had social peace
where
Opportunity was also matched with mobility, that you had a chance to succeed no matter
where you were born, what condition you were born.
So that equality of opportunity, I think, is part of the the metrics that we we we should
think about.
And I think that way what you know, both for both of my parents, it was really important
that, you know, whether it was education and and I mean university, skilled trades,
whatever these might be, that everybody has that shot to compete.
And so if you believe in that, you see Canada as a platform and you you'll invest.
You'll invest your family, you'll invest your your money, your time, because it you're
part of the project.
And I think that kind of where where where we sit as an immigrant family, yeah, with a
kind of an interesting perspective of having, you know, half of us in the United States
and my parents having come there, really believe in the Canadian project.
And Mostafa, you came and we went, we were at graduate school together four and a half
decades ago, and that's where I got to meet you.
Um but you made a decision to come to Canada.
How do you know how do you feel about that?
Well, my first decision to come to Canada was to go to school, get my PhD, but uh but that
that was that was the initial decision.
But uh we eventually decided to stay uh because of things that happened back in in Iran at
the time.
And I got the opportunity to work and go to teach at the university and then work for the
federal government.
And those have been I have never regretted those at all.
And Kevin.
Your family left a village in Poland and a village in Ukraine.
Yeah.
Came to settle in a pretty harsh, harsh part of the province, Thunder Bay, Northern
Ontario.
Had to make their way.
It wasn't easy.
Yeah, they were very proud though, to be here and um and wanting to contribute, I think,
to the building of this country.
I think they felt that they were able to do that.
Um, they gave me opportunities to get an education, to live the life that I got to l to
The live and yeah, I think the and that's I guess it is part of that's part of our history
too.
159, all the different generations that have come from other parts of the world to come to
this this great country and build it.
But we we're at this hinge moment, I'll maybe I'll ask Mostafa but somehow in the media we
get all this reduced to, you know, GDP per capita, right?
Or to these single numbers that seem to that go through the headlines.
Let's talk about that.
Because I don't think the Canadian experience, past, present, future, can be distilled
down to a number.
No, it's it's not.
And and I mean GDP per capita, yes, economists have used this as sort of the general
indicator of standard living for the whole country, but but that number going up and down
like uh also depends on two numbers it's the GDP and also the population.
And one of the things that we have, for example, we experienced over the past couple of
years that we had significant increase in our our population because of immigration.
Also, this is an indicator for the country as a whole.
It has nothing to do with what happens to individual Canadians and families.
Our per capita income may be equal to some small states in the United States, but it
doesn't mean that the quality of life here is the same as there for individual families
So,
you have to be careful using those numbers as a, as a real indicator as where we are and
how we are doing.
And you know, I think one of the other issues that we've dealt with, and I think you two
in particular, focusing Canadians and Parliament and bond rating agencies on long term
fiscal sustainability.
We have an aging population.
If we do not replace that population, and we are tied to kind of a dogmatic view.
we'll go broke.
Yeah, absolutely.
Like, you know, first slowly, then quickly.
Yeah, absolutely.
And and and and in I think when we reduce these things down to one number, we forget.
And they're you know, Switzerland's having they're having a referendum on, you know,
lowering their population.
GDP per capita is gonna go up for a while.
Yeah, right.
Absolutely.
But then at some point someone's gotta pay taxes for the social safety net and retirement
benefits of of their compatriots.
So how how do we get that, Kevin, how do we get people to talk about that?
What are the metrics we should be looking at to describe
Canada at 159 and forward that tell us how we're really doing?
Yeah.
So I mean I think there's, there's no one metric.
There's a multiple metrics.
And I think there's been work done um by our statistical agencies, Statistics Canada.
There's been work done at different universities on sort of looking at indicators that are
broader than just gross domestic product, you know, how much output with the value-added
output that gets produced in one year.
I think like um I think you need to look at the big picture.
And the big picture means like, you know, how do people feel about their country?
Are they proud of their country?
Are they able to, you know, put food on the table?
Do they have a roof over their head?
Do they have a sense of opportunity, like in terms of, you know, is for for growth to live
out their dreams?
Yeah, and I think we have those kind of indicators.
And as you've alluded to, Sahir, and thanks to Mr.
Ian Wayne, we have, you know, we have
you know, kind of put some of that information together and you can con see like, you
know, where we're at, and I think we're at a pretty good point in time.
And when you compare us to other OECD countries on these broader indicators, you know, you
again looking at the economy, looking at the incomes of people, disposable incomes,
employment pictures, looking at our you know our educational institutions, our health
institutions, our set of health outcomes, like we're you know, we're far better than
average.
So we're in a good we're in a good place, but again, no question, there's been some
flatlining in the last few years, uh, including some of the indicators that Dr.
Askari talked about, you know,
those GDP numbers.
you see weak business investment.
Uh, and I think thanks to this, you know, moment we're having with the United States right
now, you see the sort of flatlining in exports as well.
we're having this moment that we need to, you know, come together strongly as a country,
put a good path forward and as
Dr.
Askari says we need to build.
All right.
So we have a sense of where we've been.
We we got a sense of where we want to go.
We want a growing economy.
We want to make sure that it's inclusive, everyone, growing together.
But let's look at kind of the capacity, Canadian capacity to kind of get there.
And we want to talk about our public debt versus the G7 household debt and comparisons
that we we make on productivity and investment.
Because if we are gonna have, you know, uh good GDP per capita, it's fine to play around
with the immigration numbers.
We still need a prosperous economy to pay for the stuff that we all enjoy.
Let's talk about what are those tools look like under the hood here?
Kevin saying fiscally.
Where are we fiscally that allow us to have some firepower to deal with this hinge moment?
And how does that compare with others in the G7 in the broader OECD?
Yeah, so we have firepower.
And in terms of if you look at deficits, uh federal provincial deficits, you can put them
together.
You can you can you can deflate that as you know by GDP.
You can look at the the stock, you know, accumulate all those deficits, look at the stock
of debt, you can compare that with the GDP as well.
You could look at indicators of you know carrying costs of that debt, interest cost
divided by revenues or divided by GDP.
All those kind of indicators tell us that.
Um, like definitely like we're better than other countries.
We have more fiscal room than most other countries.
There might be a few exceptions within the OECD, within the G7, probably Germany comes
close.
But we're, you know, we have um we have a toolbox that we could use.
underneath that that you know that fiscal toolbox though, that is the the ability of the
country to work together.
Like we've seen struggles in terms of eliminating internal trade barriers.
getting the Federation to work.
We know when the bond rating agencies come to talk to us, they tend to go to fiscal
federalism.
How like how are the provinces going to fund healthcare, those sorts of issues?
so these are all ongoing discussions that we have in our Federation.
But fiscally, we're okay.
It's not the number one problem, we need to grow the economy, we need to build.
So Mostafa I was going to ask
You know, we get the comparison sometimes politically in the media that, you know,
governments are like households.
Can you tell me why they they're not?
They're not, absolutely.
I think this is a this is a really false comparison between the government debt or
government budget and the household budget or household debt.
One thing is that households have a finite time.
They end after they're done.
Governments don't have a finite time.
Governments continue from one government to another government to another government and
another government.
So it's a completely different kind of things.
The other thing is that the governments have different ways of dealing with debts and
raising money, whereas the households do not have the same opportunities and flexibility.
One other thing is that for example, public debt at the let let's say the federal level in
Canada, a lot of that debt as actually is within the country.
that government owes to Canadian organizations, Canadian banks, Canadian pension funds.
So it's not it's not the money that is leaving the country, it's the money that is used
inside the country.
So any any interest on that debt is actually going to Canadians.
Whereas the households
Their their debt is actually external to their their operations.
So it's a completely different thing.
That analogy is always wrong.
And I know politicians always use that, but it's really misleading.
So this is a little bit of a challenge when we're trying to find out how we're doing as a
country, is the the effort to kind of simplify usually and often ends up making things
worse, right?
so
If we're kind of thinking about like what does our toolbox look like to grow so what what
are those real attributes that we have in Canada that allow us to be successful in a very
competitive global economy?
Yeah, so we have some strong assets.
We have and I think this would be internationally internationally recognized that we have
uh strong democratic institutions.
Like so you know, when we watch American news in the evening to see what you know what is
going on, we see
weakening of American institutions.
whereas I don't we're not we we don't struggle in that way right now.
We you know, I think we have a strong Supreme Court, we have a strong parliament that
holds the government to account.
We have, you know, long standing relationships between these different levels of
government, provincial, municipal.
Um we have a very vibrant civil society group.
So I think those institutions are important and we know Sahir, Mostafa when bond rating
agencies come
They you know, they talk about institutions.
Yeah, they talk about Parliament, they talked about the Parliamentary Budget Office, uh,
and so they and or the office of uh the superintendent of financial institutions.
These are all they're working.
And I think in addition to that, like, you know, when we and when you look at some of
these these numbers
on things that really matter in terms of like thing like our we have a very intelligent
population.
We are off the we you know, nobody beats us when it comes to those basic scores on science
and literacy when they they're measuring you know our how are our kids doing at schools.
That is worth a lot.
Like and having an educated population.
Uh and again, as an immigrant, you know, my parents can again coming to this country, my
parents didn't finish high school because they, you know, they grew up in the recession.
Like for you know, for somebody like me to have the opportunity to get educated to go to
school with Dr.
Askari at Queens.
Forty five years ago is is amazing.
I think like you look at our in like a labour market picture, we have, you know, high
employment rate, we have strong labour force participation, particularly by females.
That's really important.
that is energy that you know we have in our labour market to a degree that maybe doesn't
exist in other countries.
And I think we're healthy in this country in in general.
Um
We we have a long life expectancy, much higher than the OECD average, and people generally
feel pretty good about their health.
I mean, a health is an issue because as you noted, we we have aging demographics, but on
balance, we're pretty healthy.
The guy who put together this Canada at 159 two weekends ago rode his bike to Kingston and
back.
That's two hundred and forty, fifty, you know, kilometers.
And then he still had time the two days before to put together this graphic.
So that's an indicator.
You know, if you're looking for just information on the strength of our health outcomes.
I get tired driving that length.
Yeah, it's a lot drive.
So so you know, you get the prime minister and the finance minister and others kind of
championing Canada as a place to invest, great workforce, pretty good infrastructure, lots
of natural attributes, strong institutions, good bond rating, effective institutions.
That's great.
And then we get a headline that Canada's in a technical recession.
I technically have hair, but substantially I'm as bald as you guys.
So let's walk through it.
Again, we got this word that gets all takes on a life of its own for a week or two in the
media, and all of a sudden we're looking at Canada through this very short term lens and
with one single metric.
This is a very good question.
Thanks, Ian wrote it.
But I get did the delivery.
Yeah.
Yes.
Technical recession, I mean, this is what the economists have defined as technical
recession, two quarters, consecutive quarters of negative growth.
But you have to look at that, what that negative is in terms of the amount, and what
whether it's positive or negative, if it is you are within a range of 0.2 or 0.1%, it
doesn't really matter because those measures, first of all, are not hundred percent
precise.
That's why this the Statistics Canada once in a while actually revizes those numbers.
And they may go up or down one way or another.
it's really misleading to try to focus on that as though we are in in a in a recession.
So we really have to do something.
That doesn't mean anything, really, those numbers.
In fact, there is another technical issue.
I'm I'm gonna mention this very quickly here, but it may not actually resonate with with
many people.
There are two ways of measuring GDP growth.
One is on the expenditure based, one is an income-based.
And there is a small difference between those because of some changes in the way that they
measure these things.
That is called a statistical discrepancy.
In fact, if you look at it as an income-based GDP growth, it's actually positive.
Whereas expenditure-based GDP growth is slight negative.
So again, this is shows that these numbers, you really have to look at the context.
You have to look at the things underlying those things and to decide whether we we have a
huge problem or not.
I think our tens and tens of viewers and listeners would appreciate that.
Yeah.
Little nugget.
but I think this is where, you know, Kevin, we we get caught up in the short term, right,
with these metrics.
The political cycle, the media cycle is looking for that little headline.
And
There's rarely the time to get under the hood the way Mostafa's describing.
How would you want this government to react?
playing to the short term versus the longer term strategy?
Where's the balance in that?
Well, I don't think you can completely ignore the short term, even when you want to deal
with the long term because it's it's the launching point.
And I think what Dr.
Askari was alluding to is like it's you know, whether
you can define something technically or not.
When you stand two steps back,
it's a weak economy, right?
On a year over year basis, there's really no growth in the economy from a GDP perspective.
And I think when you get under the hood a little bit, it means like you could see no
growth in a business investment.
And thanks to our changing relationship with the United States, you know, we've seen
exports, basically real exports, pretty much flatline.
there's still consumption going on in the economy.
Which is good, and there's still governments investing in the economy, which is good, but
it's a weak economy.
We've heard people critiquing, well, these deficits, they're, you know, in the 60, 65
billion dollar range, that's two percentage points of GDP.
That's that must be the problem.
No, it's not the problem.
In fact, when you look at, you know, the economists like Dr.
Askari, they you know, measure potential output of an economy, and you look at where the
economy's at now, we're operating well below that potential.
So that's a weakness.
When an economy gets weak, revenues get weak, spending goes up, you know, we have an
unemployment rate in the seven percent range.
We spend more on, you know, those stabilizers like employment insurance.
Like it's natural.
You want like you want the the federal budgetary balance, even provincial budgetary
balances that actually help stabilize the economy.
You know, take a little bit off, you know, use the credit card a little bit, to me that is
completely natural.
And yeah, it's actually built into our system.
So I think in the short term, I think the politicians feel that they had to do things they
probably weren't comfortable with, because we have this weak economy.
They cut taxes.
You know, usually if you're worried worried about the deficit, you wouldn't be cutting
taxes, but they're worried about a weak economy, worried about affordability issues
because of high food prices, higher energy prices, et cetera.
The long term though.
They've you know, there's a relationship we gotta build with the business sector.
Back to Dr.
Askari.
We gotta build this economy.
Federal government's not gonna build it, and as I said, business investment is very weak,
government investment is strong.
We gotta get the business sector going.
We have to create opportunity.
You know, our prime minister is traveling the world, he's trying to get foreign direct
investment up, and we're gonna we're gonna need that investment.
Can I say something about this?
I think when you look at consecutive governments in Canada over the last twenty years at
least, given the political cycle here, which is every four years or five years and the
pressure to to get reelected.
Politicians and decision makers focus a lot on the short-term results because they want
the people to see the impact of those policies right away.
And I think this creates a wrong expectation on the part of the population that that if
you put in a plan that requires five years, six years, ten years to see the results,
They don't want to wait for that because they they're they're feeling that they're not
getting the credit for it.
Now the current government, some of the plans that the Mr.
Carney has put in place, they require a lot of time to see the results.
you gotta do something to to
educate people that some of these long-term plans are necessary to increase growth over
the long period of time.
And you have to wait for it.
You may not see the benefits right now.
There may be some pressure right now, but you will see the results in the at the end.
And that that's that's the challenge.
So so this maybe leads into this the the the discussion about trade-offs.
Yeah.
Every government comes in, it's gotta make a series of trade-offs on policy.
We saw
you know with Prime Minister Harper, there was a particular effort to, you know, right
size the government to maybe shrink the state, didn't get as involved in kind of social
policy, prioritized, you know, fiscal outcomes like getting to a balanced budget, less so
on defense and things like that.
And with the Trudeau government, we saw ten years of an expanding state, social policy,
wealth transfer, that kind of thing.
We have this hinge moment, Prime Minister Carney gets in and his team get elected, and
we're we're back to a different agenda based on a different context.
How how do you balance off Canadians' expectations on things like their household
priorities like affordability?
Uh, which you know, you could argue the Prime Minister Trudeau actually really tried to
tackle directly child benefit, daycare, dental, pharmacare, on whatever extent those
programs are.
But that was a direct effort to try to address anxiety at the household level.
How do you keep Canadians engaged and then talk about trade-offs where we need to now
invest to close uh productivity gaps, to close, you know, output gaps that might actually
now become, you know, long-term in nature?
How how do you do that?
And Kevin, is there a way to kind of thread thread the needle between these
kind of seemingly competing outcomes that, you know, that are restricted by how much money
you can spend in in a given year?
So threading the needle, it it is that's a good metaphor.
I think that there's enormous pressure on the Prime Minister, on the cabinet to explain to
Canadians the context that we're living in.
I think we had an election a little over a year ago.
That was a big part of the election, I think.
Like, you know, Canada was facing Trump 2.0, but also facing a world where there was a war
in in Europe and now we have a war in the Middle East.
And so the world is getting even more complicated.
We have like major disruptions within the NATO community.
So I think, yeah, there's that enormous communications pressure on the government to talk
about this.
I think like the prime minister is trying.
I think he's got good polling numbers.
So maybe to some degree people are buying into it.
And we'll find out just how patient people will be in terms of waiting for the results,
right?
In terms of like Mostafa talked about, you know, the length of time.
We also have to remember a large portion of federal government budget and spending is
allocated to transfers to people, transfer to persons.
22% of government program spending is for the old age security and child benefits.
That's 22% of total federal government annual spending.
This is not a small amount of transfers.
This is just these two programs.
There are many other programs as well.
But these two major programs provide a significant amount of transfer to people.
And most of that actually goes to people who are at the lower income level because these
are income tested programs.
So we cannot forget that there is already a lot of money being spent on those things.
Now it may not be enough.
People still have issues with affordability with higher prices, but we we do have
significant amount of help in our budget.
And it's and I take it, Mostafa, then as we talk about trade-offs, you know, part of the
difficulty is you're gonna then ask Canadians, what would you do less of to enable, you
know, a more productive economy?
A larger defense uh capability?
because we're at a size of government right now where
we are you know, physically sustainable, but just marginally so.
So the room to kind of expand the size of the state really isn't there.
To deal with challenges current and future, it means we are talking about really difficult
trade-offs.
And and is that one of the reasons why the conversation is so difficult in Canada?
Well, it is.
It is a difficult trade-off, no doubt.
No doubt.
Either you have to raise taxes for for the governments to have this capacity to provide
more for people.
But that by itself is gonna affect growth and affects the future in in investment in the
country.
So so that balance is difficult.
I'm not saying that it's an easy for any government.
That's that's extremely difficult.
We're at a moment, um in my lifetime anyways where I think that the need to build national
security is
Is moving to the top of the agenda, certainly for our political leaders.
I don't know if the public are there yet, I don't know if the public can appreciate what
it's like to go from a military that was often at the one percentage point of GDP and
we're a little bit more than a three trillion dollar economy, to go to something that
would be like three and a half percent, three times plus, you know, just on core military,
and then they talk about, you know, dual use infrastructure, another one and a half
percentage point of GDP, even five percent.
And last week I was in Poland for a Ukraine recovery conference.
And the you know, the one message I heard more often than not was like, if you want peace,
prepare for war.
it's an old Roman Romanesque kind of terminology, but they're living it right now in terms
of Ukraine, Poland, and certainly with the Swedes that were there, the Finnish that were
there, Norwegians, they are all building up their spending.
And so that is just they're preparing.
And they, you know, you hear you know, President Putin's name a lot.
like those are NATO countries.
If you know, if there's a war, Canada's gonna have to show up.
We're gonna have to get ready.
And so it's gonna be important for the government, for the executive to communicate to
Canadians that there's some sacrifices coming.
We have to build up our our national defense.
We gotta do it in a really smart way.
But it's a big structural shift for us in terms of our spending Well, you're you're
absolutely right.
But I think it's government's responsibility to actually communicate that in a way that
people understand that and support that.
Because a lot of people you're right, they don't support this.
I what why why why are we increasing, you know, billions and billions of dollars is
spending on on submarines, they don't really understand the
The benefit of that.
But this also puts a lot of pressure, you know, on military procurement and the nature of
it.
Like it's something we spend a lot of time in the Parliamentary Budget Office looking at,
right?
If you need to do this, which we're arguing we do, you also have to try to figure out a
way to get jobs in Canada, the right jobs that we can sustain, which we also know makes
that stuff more expensive because we just don't have that scale production.
So this I imagine this is part of the balancing act this government's gonna have to do.
Not only to build up the capability and defense, but to keep Canadians on board to
demonstrate that there's an interest.
There's a reason why in the yes, in the long run, Canada's can stand up on its own two
feet, can protect itself, is a sovereign, strong country.
But at the same time, it has to be able to demonstrate that there are jobs for Canadians
in this and there are capabilities and there are opportunities for young people to learn
and to grow and to get their first house because we have an industrial base, an economic
base that can generate that.
And I take it that that's part of the job of a government to communicate to Canadians
that, you know, you're gonna have to walk and chew gum at the same time as a, as a
political leader.
Yeah, and I think it's been a while since we felt like, you know, people talk about
sacrifice.
I don't know that you know, Canadians are in that that that spirit yet, but again, at that
conference last week in Gdansk, Poland, lots of Ukrainians in the city and um
You almost can feel it, like the energy, like they're sacrificing.
They're fighting for they're fighting for their lives.
You know, there's people I was working with that, you know, there was a nice lady, her
husband's on the front lines right now.
So they're they're sacrificing.
It's actually very humbling to be in the presence of those people fighting for their
country.
So there's a spirit, I hope, as we hit 159, next year it'll be 160.
Like these are like this we have lots to be proud of.
But there's you know, we have work to do as well.
So I guess if we if we take stock of Canada at 159 by looking at the numbers, we're doing
pretty well.
There are geopolitical challenges.
Canadians are rising to that challenge.
you know, we're probably more cohesive as a group than we've been a long time.
We have things to celebrate now together and we are.
And there are challenges on the horizon.
like as Kevin, you described, those that are kind of on a war footing in Eastern Europe,
that we don't take our foot off the gas in Canada.
That our prosperity, our security, our sovereignty depends on it.
Those are our a our allies.
Yeah.
And so that we need to be, you know, on that war footing to make sure that Canada at 160
is even stronger than Canada at 159 and and beyond and the economic foundations and the
social infrastructure that we've built, you know, survives to make sure that Canadians
remain
happy and prosperous.
So the bottom line is that we're lucky to live in Canada.
Yeah.
And with that, on behalf of the IFSD at the University of Ottawa, I want to wish everybody
bonne fete Canada, a happy Canada Day.
Happy birthday.