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Foreword
by
Dr. Roger Gibbins
President and CEO
Canada West Foundation
Forecasting the future is never easy. In addition, most predictions about the future are spectacularly wrong.
Consider the "futurists" back in the 1950s. When they thought about the future that we live in today, they envisioned a world where people flew in space ships and regularly visited the moon and planets. Their vision was one of supersonic modes of physical transportation that would revolutionize the planet.
Of course, their vision has not materialized. Airplanes and cars are still largely as they were in 1950, only safer and with more cup holders. Their vision focused on transportation and missed the revolution in communications. It is not spaceships that have changed our world over the past 50 years, but the computer, the Internet, cell phones, and satellites.
The only certainty is that change will happen, but how and in what form we do not know.
Consider the statement made in 1943 by Thomas Watson, Senior Chairman of IBM: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." We chuckle at how wrong Mr. Watson's prediction proved to be. Before laughing too hard, however, consider that the personal computer that is ubiquitous today had not even been invented in 1943 and that IBM did not come out with its first computer until 1953.
Given the suspect nature of predictions, why do we make them?
Certainly there is a financial motivation. There is a lot of money to be made if one is able to predict what will happen.
There is also a personal incentive to predict the future and be the first person to say "I saw that coming!" We also want to know what the future holds to ease our fears. There are few things as terrifying as not knowing what is going to happen next.
But there is also a less greedy and more practical motivation for trying to see into the future: it greatly improves our ability to plan. Farmers try to gain the best information about the coming weather to plan their crops and harvesting schedules. Car manufacturers consult "futurists" to give them a sense of what consumer tastes will be like in a few years so they can plan and design models accordingly. Governments and central banks estimate future inflation and economic conditions in order to make good fiscal and monetary policy decisions in the present.
The Canada West Foundation has been actively providing policy-makers and the public with information and recommendations for 35 years. But good public policy decisions can only be made if we have a reasonably good idea of what the future will bring.
Coming Up NEXT is our opportunity to present some educated guesses as to how western Canada's economy will evolve over the next 10—20 years and why.
We offer these predictions with the hope that they will help with public policy planning in western Canada and the country as a whole. We trust that most will be right, but we also know that some will be wrong. In 2026, we hope that those looking back on these predictions will be forgiven for chuckling. Remember Mr. Watson!
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