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Foreward
By Dr. Roger Gibbins
President and CEO
Canada West Foundation
Bocce ball is my kind of game—wonderfully simple to understand and requiring absolutely no special athletic skill. Players lob grapefruitsized balls across a lawn and try to land their ball closest to the "jack" ball that sits several metres away. Although I'm sure the bocce ball aficionados of the world would be quick to correct me, the game is extremely straight-forward. That's what makes it so much fun.
Yet simple to understand does not necessarily mean simple to do.
The game requires more skill and finesse than it seems. At a recent Canada West Foundation staff barbeque, a colleague and I stood on a backyard deck and observed the bocce ball game going on below.
"What she should have done is place her ball a little closer to the jack," I observed from the deck. My colleague nodded in agreement. "She needed just a little more speed on it—she misjudged the slope in the lawn." We laughed at ourselves and our armchair quarterbacking.
We were self-appointed bocce ball experts, commentators who could see without doubt what needed to be done. It seemed so obvious from our positions on the deck.
It is much like governments receiving public input on how to manage the economy. There are a lot of armchair economic advisors out there. Judging from the collective advice generated by special interest groups, think tanks, and everyone else who has recommended changes to economic policy, managing the economy is surprisingly straightforward: all the government has to do is slash taxes and double program spending. Why is that so hard to understand?
I hope we policy wonks can laugh at ourselves for sometimes being armchair policy-makers. In the real world of balancing budgets, managing costs, and making wise public investment decisions, the task of steering the economy is much more subtle than the public sometimes thinks.
In the spring of 2006, the Canada West Foundation pulled together over 100 economists, business and community leaders, and policymakers to discuss western Canada's economy at the Shaping Our Future Conference. Participants were challenged to put forward public policy recommendations for how we can position western Canada's economy so that it will be thriving 20 years from now. (The conference built on four economic scenario planning meetings held in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba in the fall of the 2005.)
Dr. David Foot, a University of Toronto economist and demographics expert, kicked off the Shaping Our Future Conference by helping us to think about the long-term—something that economists are not always particularly comfortable doing. Economists like to predict what will happen next month, next quarter or maybe next year. But 20 years down the road?
As you can imagine, the day yielded no shortage of advice and suggestions for our governments. Simply repeating the recommendations suggested at the Shaping Our Future Conference would result in a monster list of demands that would knock the wind out of any elected official who bothered to read them. Two hundred "key priorities" are of no use to anyone.
Instead, this discussion paper boils down the recommendations into a short list of core themes. Of course, not everyone who made a recommendation at the conference will find it in the pages that follow. We are hopeful, however, that the themes capture the spirit of the discussions.
Author(s): Todd Hirsch
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