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  • Home
  • Campus views
  • Thought leaders
    • Natural Resources
    • Democratic Institutions
    • Pluralism
    • Canada in the world
    • Building healthy communities
    • Innovation
Art Sterritt on Sustainable Economics By Reos Partners, on November 14, 2014
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How Affordable Housing Can Reduce Emissions By Chris Adams, on October 4, 2015
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Annette Verschuren on Economic Innovation By Reos Partners, on October 18, 2015
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Michael Chong on Parliamentary Reform By Reos Partners, on October 18, 2015
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Tzeporah Berman on Resisting Climate Change By Reos Partners, on October 14, 2015
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Gord Lambert on Collaborative Innovation By Reos Partners, on October 18, 2015
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An inquiry into possible Canadas

What do you want Canada to be?

  • Art Sterritt on Sustainable Economics
  • Why Possible Canadas? The real reason youth don't engage in politics
  • A vision from the future: Canada in 2035, if young people were in charge
  • Where are we now?
  • How do we bridge the engagement gap?
  • How Affordable Housing Can Reduce Emissions
  • How do we build community in our cities?
  • How can Indigenous voices be better represented in the media?
  • How can we make bachelor’s degrees worth it for students?
  • How do we change who we’re really voting for?
  • Can universities lead the movement towards reconciliation?
  • Mark Jaccard on Responsible Growth
  • David Emerson on Game-Changing Leadership
  • Tzeporah Berman on Resisting Climate Change
  • Elizabeth May on Our Elected Dictatorship
  • Angus Reid on the State of Our Democracy
  • Lili-Anna Pereša on Making Tough Choices
  • Don Iveson on Boom and Bust
  • Anne Golden on Resilient Cities
  • Five Young Activists on Community
  • Alex Himelfarb on Our Weakening of the Collective
  • Sheila Watt-Cloutier on the Right to be Cold
  • Zita Cobb on Valuing Our Small Communities
  • Janet Rossant on a Hub of Creativity
  • Catherine Swift on What Business Needs
  • Gordon Nixon on Our Strengths and Weaknesses
  • Steven Guilbeault on Green Innovation
  • Kevin Lynch on Pivoting Internationally
  • Bill Robson on Human Capital
  • Michelle Rempel on Pluralism and Innovation
  • Ratna Omidvar on Growth through Diversity
  • Annette Verschuren on Economic Innovation
  • Zahra Ebrahim on Designing a Better Future
  • Jim Balsillie on Commercializing Our Ideas
  • Gord Lambert on Collaborative Innovation
  • Janice Gross Stein on Smugness
  • Roger Gibbins on Deciding Where We’re Going
  • Joseph Wilson on Learning
  • John Borrows on Indigenous Legal Traditions
  • Farah Mohamed on Our Competitive Advantage
  • Jeanette Armstrong on Moving beyond Colonialist Understandings
  • L. Jacques Ménard on Fulfilling Our Responsibilities
  • Tanzeel Merchant on How We Live
  • Yuen Pau Woo on Our Relationship with Asia
  • Suzanne Fortier on a Smart and Caring Nation
  • Khalil Shariff on the Virtue of Pluralism
  • Jean Charest on Tolerance
  • Gabrielle Scrimshaw on Learning from Our Past
  • Sherene Razack on Our Settler Legacy
  • Michael Green on Telling Our Story
  • Jean-Paul Restoule on Building Relationships
  • Simon Brault on Reinventing Ourselves
  • Pat Carney on the Challenges of Migration
  • Nadia Duguay on a Canada for All
  • Michel Venne on Participation
  • Danny Graham on Citizen Engagement
  • Brian Crowley on Our Institutional Legacy
  • Tamara Vrooman on Economic Democracy
  • Michael Chong on Parliamentary Reform
  • Preston Manning on Reconciling Economy and Environment
  • Peter Tertzakian on Our Great Energy Industry
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Democratic Institutions
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Natural Resources
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Campus views

WHY POSSIBLE CANADAS?

Canada is at a critical junction. As we approach our 150th birthday in 2017, we are facing many steep challenges, from reconciliation with Indigenous Canadians to the future of our resource-dependent economy to our responsibility to the world’s refugees ― issues that strike at the heart of this nation’s identity. 

Yet, public dialogue about tough issues is too often divisive, knee-jerk and siloed. Too frequently the agenda is set by negative political campaigns sparring for votes. We, regular people, need to take back control of the message. More than ever before we need everyone to contribute to a constructive conversation about our future.

Possible Canadas is our response to this challenge. A partnership of diverse organizations, this is a space to engage in these important conversations. Join us in asserting civil society’s role in determining the future of Canada.

DIALOGUES

CAMPUS VIEWS

What do you want Canada to be?

This is the question 10 student journalists posed to their campus communities. They interviewed hundreds of students on 10 campuses, then produced in-depth investigations into how Canada could start to realize these visions. What did they learn? That despite all the stereotypes of disengaged Millennials, young people have a lot to say about the future of our country.

Learn more

THOUGHT LEADERS

What will it take for Canadians to succeed in creating a good future?

In interviews with 56 insightful Canadians, Possible Canadas probed issues including the future of natural resources, pluralism and our place in the world. What Canadas are possible? How will the ways we think and act affect the future we will have? What is needed of us?

Learn more

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

What do YOU want Canada to be? Start by texting “Canada” to 778 762 0809.

Languages

  • English
    • Français (French)

Tweet us at #PossibleCanadas

Contributing Partners


Produced by:

Financial and other support from:

Join the conversation on Twitter using hashtag #PossibleCanadas.

About

Possible Canadas is a partnership of diverse organizations that share the goal of supporting forward-looking conversations about the future of Canada. The project is produced by Discourse Media and Reos Partners, in collaboration with RECODE and the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation. Partners’ support does not imply endorsement of the views represented. Contact us at possiblecanadas@discoursemedia.org.

©2015 Discourse Media - Collaborative solutions journalism

From 1870 to 1996, more than 150,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children were placed in residential schools and forbidden to speak their language and practice their culture. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) estimates there are 80,000 former students living today, and that the ongoing impact of residential schools are a major contributor to challenges facing modern Aboriginal populations.

Canada’s TRC is one of many commissions worldwide to undertake revealing and resolving past wrongdoings, mostly by governments. Other examples include:

South Africa

In 1996, President Nelson Mandela authorized a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to study the effects of apartheid in South Africa. The commission allowed victims of human rights violations to give statements about their experiences, but also allowed perpetrators of violence to request amnesty from criminal prosecution.

Argentina

The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, initiated in 1983, investigated human rights violations, including 30,000 forced disappearances, committed during the Dirty War.

Guatemala

The Historical Clarification Commission was created in 1994 in an effort to reconcile Guatemala after a 36-year civil war. The commission issued a report in 1999 which estimated that more 200,000 people were killed or disappeared as a result of the conflict.

In June, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission released 94 “calls to action” to “redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation.”

The scope of recommendations range from child welfare to education to Indigenous language rights, and has recommendations targeted for private and public spheres of Canadian life alike. The document calls upon law schools in Canada to require all students to take a course in Aboriginal people and the law, for example. Notably, the document calls upon the federal government to appoint a public inquiry into the causes of, and remedies for, the disproportionate victimization of Aboriginal women and girls.  

The 11-page document can be read here.             

http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/Findings/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf

MMP

STV

Canada’s employment statistics are much better now than they were 20 years ago. In 2012 for example, 61.8% of working-age Canadians were employed as opposed to 58.7% in 1995. The unemployment rate has gone down from 9.5% in 1995 to 6.8% in 2014. Youth unemployment has gone down too, from 16.1% to 13.5% in the same time period. The outlier in these trends is labour force participation, or the amount of working-age Canadians who are either employed, or unemployed and looking for work. Right now, participation is at the lowest rate since the year 2000, mainly because the “baby-boomer” generation is moving towards retirement. Read more about that here.

Housing preferences among Millennials, however, tend towards smaller, higher density housing close to activities, signs that changing economic realities and the generation shift will create more demand for housing in compact, walkable neighbourhoods.

Belfry-Munroe suspects that youth disinterest has to do with political parties. “There’s been a lack of engagement one-on-one with people since the 1970s, and a greater focus on mass media and now things like social media,” says Belfry-Munroe. “The other thing is that parties have become uncool,” she continues, “and I think that getting excited about the election without parties is like getting excited about the World Series without the teams. If you weren’t excited about the Blue Jays, you would not be concerned about the World Series.”

To extend this analogy, young Canadians currently aren’t even interested in baseball. What could work to change this would be getting other types of fans — soccer, golf, darts, you name it — engaged in baseball due to their passion for sports in general. Politically, this is the bridge that is missing for youth. The Blue Jays don’t matter if youth are removed from sports. Similarly, political parties and leaders would have little relevance if youth are removed from electoral politics.

“The generational effect is even larger [than the life cycle effect]. At the same age, turnout is 3 or 4 points lower among baby boomers than it was among pre-baby boomers, 10 points lower among generation X than it was among baby boomers, and another 10 points lower among the most recent generation than it was among generation X at the same age.”

— An excerpt from “Why Was Turnout So Low?” in Anatomy of a Liberal Victory by Andre Blais, Elisabeth Gidengil, Richard Nadeau and Neil Nevitte.

Rock The Vote also published a Youth Voter Strategy Report in 2007 that compiled many scholarly findings on this subject. You can find that here.

According to Elections Canada, “people are less likely to cast a ballot if they feel they have no influence over government actions, do not feel voting is an essential civic act, or do not feel the election is competitive enough to make their votes matter to the outcome, either at the national or the local constituency level.” Read more here.

The trend of youth voter disengagement persists across much of the developed world. According to the Economist, for example, in 2010 just 44 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 voted in Britain’s general election compared to 76% of those aged 65 and over. America saw its lowest voter turnout ever in its 2014 midterm elections, where just 19.9 per cent of young people voted, compared to an overall turnout rate of 36.4 per cent. This trend tends to change, however, when charismatic politicians reach out to youth. According to Politico, Barack Obama would have lost the 2012 American presidential election without youth voting — overwhelmingly for him. Read more here.


 

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