Posted at 8:00 a.m.
(Ottawa) Former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada Anne McLellan has adopted a well-known expression to define the role that the Coalition for a better future has wanted to play since its creation a year ago: “Unity is strength”. .
This coalition, which has 131 members representing large corporations, SMEs, students, First Nations, the cultural community and non-profit organizations such as the Red Cross, among others, celebrated its first year of existence on Friday.
Its objective remains relevant: to propose a vision of inclusive and sustainable economic growth that goes well beyond electoral cycles and that would allow Canada to have one of the most competitive economies in the world.
The Coalition has developed a dashboard of 21 OECD metrics that will track the country’s progress against key economic, social and environmental indicators over the next decade. The first annual progress report will be published in early 2023.
These indicators include the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, economic resilience, the trade balance, the contribution of clean technologies to GDP and the percentage of households with access to broadband internet, among others.
“We get far better results when we work together,” said Anne McLellan, who was an influential minister from Alberta in the Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin.
She also leads by example. She co-chairs the Coalition for a Better Future with Lisa Raitt, a former cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.
This call for consultation between the country’s driving forces is all the more important in a world where competition is still very fierce, but which is also marked by instability, underlined Mr.me McLellan in interview with The Press. The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the global supply chain as well as Russia’s devastating war in Ukraine are prime examples.
There is a high degree of uncertainty in the world, and no one should pretend otherwise. We strive to ensure that while governments, the private sector and civil society must absolutely understand and manage the short-term challenges, we must not lose sight of our long-term objectives if we are to be competitive in 2030. and in 2050.
Anne McLellan
In recent months, the consultation has also yielded results in the country, underlined Mr.me McLellan. The federal government and Ontario have worked together with the private sector and labor to make the province’s auto industry a sector of the future by focusing on building electric vehicles.
In Quebec, consultation between Ottawa and the Legault government helped convince the pharmaceutical company Moderna to establish a vaccine manufacturing plant and a major research center in the Montreal region — a crucial step forward in reviving the biomanufacturing in the country.
She believes that the same consultation between Ottawa and Alberta could make it possible to consolidate another sector of the future in her province, namely so-called blue hydrogen, produced from natural gas.
“Canadians, in their heart of hearts, do not want a divide like we see elsewhere in the world. They want us to work together. They don’t want bickering between governments. They don’t want companies to tear each other apart either. They want us to focus our efforts on supporting inclusive and sustainable economic growth. This is the message that Lisa Raitt and I hammer home everywhere we go,” said the former Liberal minister.
According to Anne McLellan, the quality of life of all Canadians depends on it over the coming decades.
The Coalition for a Better Future has already delivered this message directly to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and some of his ministers over the past 12 months.