L. Jacques Ménard.
In a six-week series of interviews, Canadians with a variety of experiences discuss the major challenges our country is facing and how best to address them. This instalment deals with taking our place in the world.
L. Jacques Ménard, chairman of BMO Nesbitt Burns and president of Bank of Montreal, Quebec, was interviewed Nov. 15 by Adam Kahane, chairman, North America, of Reos Partners.
Kahane: What do you see going on in the country that needs attention?
Ménard: We aren't contributing inside our country and outside to the world to the extent of our potential. Being social democrats, we tend to defer too much, partly out of a sense of respect but also out of a kind of passivity that says, "Let's wait until we get guidance." The way we can do better is by taking responsibility for what Canada is to become. We have to remind ourselves that it's not going to come from government and it's not going to come from elsewhere – Canada will be what we make it. Caring, fairness, solidarity, resourcefulness and innovativeness are all Canadian values. Canada will be a better place if our leaders and citizenry take more responsibility for practising those values and creating better opportunities for people to succeed.
Kahane: If you could ask a clairvoyant about the future, what would you want to know?
Ménard: Has Canada become a model in the realm of education? Canada is one of the fastest-aging countries in the world. If we are to continue with our Canadian social and economic model, the generation of workers 25 years from now will need to be much more productive than my generation or that of my father. Therefore, we must become a leader in education and in our ability to stimulate innovation and creativity in sciences, health care and service areas. Economically, we are a small country, and the only way we're going to grow is by becoming much more effective and by regaining our role as a powerful exporter of ideas, services and certain products. We need to wean ourselves off being totally dependent on our national resources. We can still be a resource-based country, we can still ship oil and minerals, but we need to have a more balanced economy.
I would also want to know: Have we reduced the unemployment rate to below 6 per cent? Have we engaged our aboriginal communities in a way that we haven't yet been able to do, and have we reduced the gap between rich and poor? To address the middle-class challenge that we have today, we will have to bring many more people into the active society. Right now in Quebec, more than 40 per cent of the people don't make enough revenue to pay taxes.
Kahane: If things have not turned out well over the next 20 years, what would the story have been?
Ménard: How do you miss an opportunity on talents? You do two things: You don't develop them and you don't retain them. We compete in the world, and the fewer unique skills we develop, the poorer our country will be. We can't shrink ourselves into greatness. At some point, we have some collective responsibilities to one another generationally. Future generations will pass a tough judgment on today's generations, saying, "Look at what they did through their obsession with an individualistic way of thinking."
A lot of our imaginative, energetic and highly schooled kids would have left the country. Many smart kids have already left Quebec. In response, here in Montreal, we've realized that we can do one of two things: We can keep harping on our weaknesses or we can decide to work on our strengths. We can wait for someone else to define us and our potential and our calling as a city, or we can act on the leverage that we do have as a community and as citizens. There is energy and creativity and talent in this city, and one of the challenges is figuring out how to retain, attract and develop it.
Possible Canadas is a project created by Reos Partners, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and a diverse coalition of philanthropic and community organizations. For longer versions of these interviews, or to join the conversation, visit possiblecanadas.ca