On the day of the federal election, the Globe came out with a list of eight “fateful issues” that Canada’s next Prime Minister (Mark Carney, as we now know) would have to face. I’ve read it a couple of times now and what strikes me most is not that the list is wrong, per se, but that the framing is so desperately plodding and unimaginative. And we need some serious imagination right now.

Let’s get down to specifics here: the eight areas they mentioned were i) Trump, ii) Economy and Tariffs, iii) Housing, iv) Climate and Energy, v) Immigration, vi) Health Care, vii) Defence and viii) Unity. You will note three things about this list. First, that a good chunk of these issues—notably healthcare but also unity and the economy—would always be on a “top issues” list. Second, there is one in particular that is probably wrong (as important as “Climate” may be, the electorate has made it rousingly clear that they DNGAF and amply rewarded the party that just discarded what by the leader’s own admission was the greatest, fairest and most efficient attempt to control emissions anywhere in the world, ever). And third, it’s organized for the most part in a siloed way that lines up with Ministerial responsibilities rather than in a way that speaks to the deeper malaise that the country faces.

Let’s start with the section on Housing by Alex Bozikovic, who I think is a pretty sensible commentator on this issue. Everything he says in his section is wrong. Yes, housing prices need to come down, and that’s only really going to happen if we fix things like zoning and development charges and a bunch of other things, none of which are strictly speaking federal responsibilities. But the framing is brutally narrow and in some ways quite unhelpful because housing policy is but one of the ways Canada has declared war on young people.

Forgive me for repeating myself (this is a topic I have raised before), but Canada does not give a rat’s hairy behind about youth. PISA scores? Down. And nobody cares because we’d prefer to give that money to older Canadians instead. Quality of education? Well, it’s not just that it’s going down, it’s that people aggressively don’t care. Hell, Ontario has twice re-elected the man who, during COVID kept schools closed longer than necessary so as not to endanger summer mall openings. Price of housing? Up, up, up, but that’s a good thing because older folks get more money. We think we’re being nice to young people by making postsecondary education cheaper and more available, but if we aren’t paying even the slightest attention to quality, or to the ability of graduates to afford their own places to live after they graduate, what’s the point?

What the next PM needs to do—what all Canadian governments need to do—is to stop eating our future by prioritizing the needs of the aging portion of our population over those of our youth. Housing is a big part of it, yes, but it’s important not to lose sight of the bigger picture, which is that we need to build a Canada where young people are given the tools and the opportunities to thrive. Housing, yes, but education too. It’s all one thing.

Or take the issue of immigration. Again, there’s nothing wrong with what Sara Mojehedzadeh wrote in the issue, but the scope is totally inadequate. Immigration isn’t something we do for the sake of it, throughout Canada’s history, we have welcomed people who could make the country grow. Sometimes that meant attracting farmers, sometimes it meant attracting factory workers, and for the past few decades, it has meant, above all, attracting highly qualified scientific and professional talent. As inflation surged in the post-COVID period, the Liberals lost sight of this last piece and turned the immigration system (and the student visa system for that matter) into a mere conveyor belt for low-wage unskilled labour designed to tamp down upward pressure on wages at the low end of the scale (all to the backdrop of a cheering Bay Street which has an inexplicably hard time working out how the country is supposed to work without oodles of cheap, unskilled labour). This was a terrible idea, not least because of the way it skewed housing prices in 2022-24. But as the backlash has set in, we have seemed to have settled on the notion that immigration is the problem, rather than the skill level of that immigration. 

And that, folks, is damaging our ability to respond to Trump (see how this is all interconnected?). When Cheeto Jesus was first elected in 2016, Canada made a big deal about how it would welcome any talent fleeing the United States (you can see some of their stories in this month’s issue of Toronto Life). Despite Trump II and his assault in all forms of knowledge and expertise being substantially more effective at pushing top talent to leave the country, Canada is not adequately responding to this once-in-a-century opportunity to pick up talent on the cheap because of housing.

But of course, talent isn’t just something you get from abroad. We can grow it here, too—if we have the will and determination to make it happen. We need quality education, including quality, effective postsecondary education, with, in most programs, better links to the world of work (why not aim to be the best country in the world for graduate work transitions?). We need better—and shorter and more focused—graduate education (nota bene—this means actually changing graduate programs and not just asking for them to be better funded). And of course, talent needn’t just be a synonym for advanced degrees; increased quality in vocational programs and a search for more immigrants with talents in vocational fields is needed too. It only requires that Canadian employers and politicians start placing a premium on improving skills and talent in vocational fields instead of just demanding more warm bodies all the time.

More talent is the answer to a whole bunch of questions. It’s how we’ll build world-class companies, solve the productivity crisis, and ease pressure in the health care system. But first, we have to see it as a solution, which apparently is beyond even the country’s newspaper of record.

Anyways, let me boil all that down into three equations:

More Housing + Better (not just more expensive) Education = OPPORTUNITY

More Housing + Better (not just more expensive) Education + Smart immigration = TALENT

TALENT + OPPORTUNITY = INCLUSIVE PROSPERITY.

Stay focused on the big picture, folks. It’s the difference between national greatness and continued mediocrity.