idea meets with widespread (but not universal!) acceptance, and we at AIMS had a major role to play in that evolution of attitudes.
A series of fortuitous events then occurred, which, like a catalyst in a science experiment, caused this book to begin to precipitate out of these diverse experiences.
Probably the first such event came in 2004, when I was still a columinist for La Presse in Montreal. The editor-in-chief, André Pratte, invited me to participate in a joint La Presse/Radio Canada conference in Montreal on the Quebec model of social and economic development. Tasked with presenting a talk on whether Quebec could afford the “Quebec Model,” I laid the groundwork for much of what became Chapter 7. The next event was an invitation I received from Mackenzie King Visiting Professor Randall Morck to come and give the Canada Seminar at Harvard in November 2005. While the talk was ostensibly to be about what I had learned about regional policy during my time at AIMS, the prestige of the institution and the catholicity of tastes of the audience made me want to avoid a parochial talk. It was in my ruminations over what to say to the Harvard audience that the idea crystallized of the decades-long bidding war between Quebec and Ottawa for the loyalty of Quebeckers, an idea which forms a crucial part of the architecture of this book. EI, regional development policy, vast transfers to the provinces, massive pseudo-work, all of the themes in which I had been immersed within the region, now fit within a larger vision of how Canada had evolved over the last fifty years.
Michael Ignatieff, whom I already knew and respected, was a sympathetic member of the audience and was struck by both the bidding war concept as well as by the analysis of how long-term dependence had harmed the Atlantic-Canadian economy. Now that he has moved on to other responsibilities, I hope that he still remembers his initial enthusiasm for these ideas.
An invitation from my friend, UPEI Dean of Arts Richard Kurial, added fuel to the fire. Richard asked me to take part in a debate at the Institute for Public Administration of Canada’s annual conference in Charlottetown in August 2006. On the other side of the debate was the redoubtable Nancy Riche of the Canadian Labour Congress, and we had it out on the theme of the role of trade unions in the public sector in Canada. I’ll leave it to others to decide who got the better of the argument. The important thing to note is that the reflections that the preparations for this debate triggered form a large part of Chapter 6.
The next catalyst was another invitation from another friend, Kevin Lynch. Kevin had just been made clerk of the Privy Council by our new prime minister, Stephen Harper. Kevin was hosting a retreat for his new flock of deputy ministers at the old Ottawa City Hall, and he asked me to come and be on a panel about the chief economic challenges facing the country. I had recently been mulling over the demographic challenges facing Canada, and was particularly struck by the impact the coming labour shortages were already having on Atlantic Canada, traditionally the highest unemployment region in Canada, and so Kevin’s invitation spurred me to put those first impressions into a more developed narrative. That story was later woven into this book, chiefly in Chapter 1.
My talk to the federal deputies was quickly followed by an invitation from Rob Wright, the deputy minister of finance, to come to Ottawa as the Clifford Clark Visiting Economist at Finance Canada. The Clifford Clark is a very prestigious and unusual post in Ottawa—the only way to describe it is as the one-man in-house think-tank and policy gadfly in the Department of Finance. The incumbent holds the rank of an assistant deputy minister, participates as a full member in the Executive Committee that makes all decisions at the officials’ level, and gets to choose the policy areas in which he will play that gadfly role within the department and the government more generally. Given how I got there, and given the importance I was increasingly attaching to the transformative effects of population aging and labour shortages, I decided to make those my chief areas of interest. The second half of this book was largely conceived during this time.
I was blessed during my tenure at Finance to have the ready, and even enthusiastic, support of many incredibly knowledgeable colleagues who helped me think through many of the population change issues, both by supplying me data and by giving me the benefit of their own thoughts. Because being associated with this book in any way will likely not be a career-advancing move in Ottawa, I won’t refer by name to the many people who gave to me so generously of their time and thoughts, but they know who they are and I want them to know I will never be able to thank them enough.
Because population change is one of those deep and far-reaching social and economic shifts that are actually quite foreseeable, I met little resistance within the department when I pressed on them the case for a more vigorous response from the federal government to the changes on the horizon. Much of the great work we did internally, however, has still not seen the light of day. Thereby hangs a tale that, alas, my oath of secrecy prevents me from telling in all its gory detail.
Suffice it to say, that the thing that struck me most forcibly on my arrival in Ottawa was the extent to which the federal government was mesmerized (and I use the word advisedly) by the provinces, and particularly the province of Quebec. Everything that Ottawa could or should do was weighed and measured by how it would influence or shape relations with the provinces, as if there was nothing more to the country than these peculiar quaint relics of colonial history and Victorian politics and technology. And the consequences of the uneven effects of population aging on different provinces, and particularly on Quebec, was just something that Ottawa was not willing to shine a spotlight on. The circle was neatly closed between my early fascination with Quebec and my more recent preoccupation with what an aging population means for Canada.
The most unexpected tributary of this book was the one that turned out to be the closest to me. No one can think about the great issues of population change without being struck by their intimate connection with the great life decisions of individuals, and most notably the decisions about marriage and family.
While I was off hobnobbing in Ottawa, my long-time partner, Shelley, was home in Halifax, running our restaurant and café, the Queen of Cups and the Queen of Cups Too. We missed each other terribly even though I was home on weekends, and I quickly began to realize that I couldn’t think about Marriage and Family on a grand scale without also thinking about marriage and family for myself, and the critical things I had to say about the decisions Canadians had made in this regard over the past few decades applied just as much to me as to anyone else. I asked Shelley to marry me in February 2008, and we are about to celebrate our first anniversary as this book is being prepared for the printer in June of 2009. My only regret is that it took me so long to get around to it; my great joy is that Shelley would have me in spite of everything.
There are many other people who deserve my thanks for the part they played in making this book come to life.
Sean Speer is certainly one of the most important. Sean, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Ottawa, is one of the brightest intellectual lights of his generation and it has been my privilege to have him as my researcher. “Researcher” doesn’t really cover the extent of the partnership I enjoyed with Sean on this project, however, for it would really be more accurate to say that it was a close collaboration. I came to depend on Sean a very great deal and he not only never let me down, he consistently exceeded my expectations. Every reference was meticulously chased down and documented. Every idea was exhaustively debated. Every possible source turned upside down and shaken vigorously to extract the gems within. I know that in a few years Sean will be the one writing the books and I will be looking on admiringly.
My publisher, Key Porter, has made the painful process of creation as smooth as could be hoped for. Executive editor Jonathan Schmidt worked with me on the manuscript and forced me to raise my literary game. Marketing manager Daniel Rondeau and consultant Pat Cairns threw themselves enthusiastically into plans to get people actually to buy the book. Wendy Thomas was my able copy-editor; designer Sonya V. Thursby did great work on the cover and interior. Editor-in-chief Linda Pruessen was the one who saw the potential in my idea and first brought me into the Key Porter fold, in large part I suspect because of the recommendation of my friend, fellow author
