Why we need to make bold bets.

Canadians can be justifiably proud of what we’ve achieved in our first 150 years. Canada is peaceful and prosperous, and consistently ranks among the world’s top 20 countries in terms of quality of life. Yet as we celebrate our past, we must also look to our future.

We live in a world of rising economic, political and social uncertainty. In this world, we simply cannot leave Canada’s future to chance. We must confront the challenges we face directly, from sluggish growth to an aging workforce to accelerating technological disruption. We must respond courageously, making critical decisions to actively create the future we want by doing what’s right, not what’s easy or expedient.

We need to be bold. It’s in this spirit that Deloitte today releases a report called Bold Bets for our Country: It’s Time for Deliberate Action. It explores how “bold bets” have played a pivotal role in Canada’s history, and argues that it’s time to make new bold bets on our future.

We’ve made bold bets on the future many times: the Canadian Pacific Railroad expansion, universal health care, NAFTA, even Confederation itself. Each was highly controversial. Each posed sizable risk. Yet each, in the end, delivered a lasting, positive impact.

It’s time for leaders in business, government and civil society made new bold bets in three areas to secure our future, protect our standard of living and deliver a better quality of life for all Can- adians.

First, we need to focus our resources on the industries, sectors and technologies that are, or have the realistic potential to become, innovative global champions. We need to disproportionately support those areas where we are recognized to have a distinct competitive advantage and where companies are willing to invest to exploit those advantages. We heard across the country that markets — not governments — should identify our current and future global champions.

Second, in a world where others are pulling back, we need to leverage our openness and diversity to position our champions within a global flow of ideas, goods and talent. This means dramatically reducing the barriers to talent and trade that hinder growth in areas of competitive advantage: aggressively pursuing the world’s best talent, targeting infrastructure investment to facilitate flow to areas of competitive advantage, and strategically diversifying trade to allow our global champion entrepreneurs and businesses access to the world’s fastest growing markets with focus and speed that outpaces global competition.

Finally, we must disrupt our education system. We need to develop and embrace a flexible, collaborative, life- long learning model in which government, business and academia work together to provide Canadians with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed throughout their careers. We need to create a global skills training powerhouse and business must take the lead role in education and training competitive workers.

Business leaders, government policymakers and ordinary Canadians need to engage in a dialogue about Canada’s future. We’ll need to balance private-sector ingenuity and public- sector leadership and work together to set national priorities and policy. We’ll have to find our courage and overcome our typically Canadian aversion to risk. And we’ll need to be willing to play the long game.

My question for Canada’s business and government leaders, then, is this: Do we have the courage to make such bold bets?