The author argues that Canada needs to triple its population in order to avoid global obscurity, create lasting prosperity, ensure economic and ecological sustainability, and build equality and reconciliation of Indigenous and regional divides, and provides ways to achieve this.

To face the future, Canada needs more Canadians. But why and how many? Canada’s population has always grown slowly, when it has grown at all. That wasn’t by accident. For centuries before Confederation and a century after, colonial economic policies and an inward-facing world view isolated this country, attracting few of the people and building few of the institutions needed to sustain a sovereign nation. In fact, during most years before 1967, a greater number of people fled Canada than immigrated to it. Canada’s growth has faltered and left us underpopulated ever since. At Canada’s 150th anniversary, a more open, pluralist and international vision has largely overturned that colonial mindset and become consensus across the country and its major political parties. But that consensus is ever fragile. Our small population continues to hamper our competitive clout, our ability to act independently in an increasingly unstable world, and our capacity to build the resources we need to make our future viable. In Maximum Canada, a bold and detailed vision for Canada’s future, award-winning author and Globe and Mail columnist Doug Saunders proposes a most audacious way forward: to avoid global obscurity and create lasting prosperity, to build equality and reconciliation of indigenous and regional divides, and to ensure economic and ecological sustainability, Canada needs to triple its population.

This book is a reflection of my forty years experience in resource development in Canada and overseas. The industry was once a driver of the Canadian economy. With the Climate Weapon and political bias it has been strangled. Billions in free enterprise investment has been squandered and unemployment has needlessly mushroomed. All for political whim.

Canada is a prosperous country, but this prosperity is being stressed by demographics, pressures on the public purse, and low productivity growth. To maintain the nation's high quality of life, prosperity must increase while remaining sustainable. Combining Tom Brzustowski's extensive knowledge of government, industry, and academia, The Way Ahead, articulates a strategy for moving the Canadian economy towards higher-value products based on research and development, describing the practical steps government, industry and academia must take to improve things in the short term and prepare strategically for the long term. He recommends increasing productivity growth by embracing an economy based on innovation, prioritizing research and development, marketing Canadian products internationally, and encouraging entrepreneurial activities in all sectors. Ultimately, increasing prosperity will require a new level of understanding, strategic coherence, and mutual support between the private and public sectors in Canada, a challenge that the author feels Canada is prepared to and absolutely must face.

Canada: What It Is, What It Can Be provides an incisive examination of this country's increasing prosperity gap - the difference in value between what we do create and what we could create if we performed at our full potential. As Roger Martin and James Milway demonstrate, although we are proud of our trading prowess, we do not participate as aggressively in world markets with innovative products and services as we could. While we want to take risks to achieve success, our business strategies and economic policies need to set the bar higher to achieve the success we want for Canada.

An account of the emergence of the Canadian nation's efforts to build a community in the North American continent, separate from the United States.

This is a book about the ideas and policies that will dominate Canada’s future. In a world that is getting smaller and more competitive, Canada needs a new set of public policies that will put learning, education, and investment in new technologies at the centre. The vulnerability of the planet itself to pollution and global warming, continuing violence, ethnic conflict, and threats to world peace also put Canada’s place in the world at the centre of a new agenda. Bob Rae’s book is a candid assessment of where we are and where we need to be. It draws on his deep experience in Canadian public policy at home and abroad, and points to how Canada, and Canadians, can make a difference. From health care to taxes, from poverty to wealth creation, this is a creative and provocative blueprint for change. From the Trade Paperback edition.