Читать книгу The Canadian Century - Brian Lee Crowley - Страница 3

This book would not exist without two organizations. Appropriately, one is American and the other Canadian.

The first is Liberty Fund, Inc., of Indianapolis, Indiana. Liberty Fund is a foundation dedicated to ensuring that the intellectual case for human freedom is examined and understood around the world. The three authors of this book had the enormous good fortune to be participants in a Liberty Fund colloquium on Liberty and Public Choice that took place in Ottawa, Ontario, in March 2009.

A number of discussions around that colloquium table stimulated us to think more deeply about how Canada had changed over the course of the 1990s. Moreover, Canadian Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, was equally a participant at the Ottawa event and his knowledge of the American fiscal situation drew us into further discussions of how the paths being followed by Canada and the US, respectively, were diverging in Canada’s favour. We realized that neither Canadians nor Americans had any inkling of how remarkably their relative positions had changed in recent years.

One immediate result of this fortuitous meeting of minds was the co-authoring of an op-ed by two of the present authors (Clemens and Veldhuis) along with Edwards. The piece, which appeared in the Washington Post, compared various aspects of Canadian and American economic performance over the last two decades. The disbelief of readers on both sides of the border when presented with the facts underlined for us the perennial quality of popular prejudices; they endure long after the reality that gave rise to them has been reshaped by events.

The writing of the op-ed forced the authors to examine in greater detail what actually happened in the two countries over the 1990s with specific emphasis on Canada’s energetic and visionary reforms, contrasted with America’s manifest difficulties in wrestling its fiscal and entitlement problems to the ground. The combination of the conference and the writing of the op-ed convinced the authors that these very different cross-border circumstances created an historic opportunity for Canada and motivated us to speak out to ensure that, if Canada fails to capitalize on this opportunity, it will not be out of ignorance. We are indebted to Liberty Fund for having brought us together, and to the other participants who helped us to understand how little Canadians and Americans really understood one another.

The other organization to which this book owes its existence is the new Macdonald-Laurier Institute for Public Policy in Ottawa. MLI (“Emily” to its friends) is a brand new institute aiming to fill a glaring gap in Canada’s democratic infrastructure: the absence of a proper broadly based think tank in the national capital, talking to the national political personnel, the national media, and the national electorate about policy issues that matter to the Canadian nation. MLI is equally dedicated to the proposition that the founders and early architects of Canada endowed us with something of inestimable worth: the institutions and values on which a country might be built in what was formerly British North America.

As the three authors carried on the conversation begun at the Liberty Fund event, we began to place that discussion in the context of what we knew about those origins of our country, origins that might be distant in time but that left an indelible stamp on our institutions and our character as a people. As we teased out the changes that had produced such good results for Canada over the past two decades, we were quickly drawn to see how closely those changes mirrored the plan for Canada of one of our early prime ministers, Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

Thus was born MLI’s Canadian Century project. You hold in your hand the first product of that project, but we hope it will be only one of many as the numerous fine minds associated with MLI begin to expand on the basic themes we have established in this book. Over the coming months and years the new institute will explore in more detail how smart policy in Canada can help to speed our country’s return to Laurier’s plan and the Canadian century he believed lay within our grasp. We want to thank MLI, its board of directors and supporters for the assistance and support they gave us as we struggled to tell the story of how and why Canada can, in the twenty-first century, move out of America’s shadow and claim its rightful place in the sun.

Many people are due thanks for the direct role they played in turning this narrative from a mere gleam in our eye to the book you see before you. In particular we would like to thank the following people, all of whom read and commented on the draft at various stages or otherwise contributed to the content: Chris Edwards, Tad DeHaven, Nadeem Esmail, John R. Graham, Milagros Palacios, Vicki Murray, François Vaillancourt, Don Drummond, Don Johnston, Frank McKenna, David Perry, Jock Finlayson, Colin Robertson, Sean Speer, and Bob Knox. Canada’s former ambassador to the US, Allan Gotlieb, honoured us with a foreword.

Financial support was received from numerous sources, including the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Aurea Foundation, a foundation that wishes to remain anonymous, and David Laidley.

At our publisher, Key Porter, we received the excellent editorial, technical, and marketing support that are its hallmark. In particular we would like to acknowledge the help of vice-president Tom Best, executive editor Jonathan Schmidt, designer Marijke Friesen, marketing manager Daniel Rondeau and publicist Kelly Ward.

We want to thank our families, and particularly our wives, Shelley Crowley, Kim Crosman, and Danielle Veldhuis, for the support and understanding they gave to us as we laboured under a very tight deadline to complete this book.

Finally, we would like to dedicate this book to Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his bold vision of a Canadian century, as well as to the many Canadians and their leaders who had the courage to put us back on his path to national greatness. May our generation and future ones be equal to the challenge they set out for us.