If you listen carefully to what all of the senior conservative government officials are saying these days, it appears they want to turn Canada into an economic juggernaut. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Stephen Harper told investors and bankers that Canada is getting ready for major transformational change.
Having scolded the Europeans for the failure of their post-war welfare state, Harper told them that Canada, worried about its aging population, will soon be dealing with the pension costs, which their nations have failed to tackle until it's too late.
Everyone's trying to ferret out the nature of Harper's grand scheme for the country. So here's my guess: First he knows what we all know, that the globe is undergoing a tectonic shift, one which is moving wealth, money and power from the old industrial west to the emerging nations of the Asia-Pacific.
Second, he also knows that globally Canada is increasingly seen as an energy superpower. It's clear to me at least that Harper intends to put his shoulder to the national psyche and heave it away from being as Eurocentric as it has been since the beginning and into seeing itself and acting to a greater degree as a Pacific nation.
Naturally, our neighbours next door will always be our most significant trading partner but Americans are suffocating in debt which along with other deeply rooted problems will restrain that country's long-term prospects.
Obviously, because he said as much, Harper believes Canada's economic well-being will depend heavily on our ability to find other customers and especially in the emerging nations of Asia, such as China, India, Indonesia, Korea.
That's why he appears so anxious and frustrated with the resistance and slow pace of environmental approvals for projects like the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would carry Alberta oilsands bitumen across British Columbia to tankers on the West Coast.
He told the crowd in Davos getting Canadian energy resources to Asian customers is a national priority. More than that, it appears Harper intends to task every department of the government from Foreign Affairs to immigration and energy to make trade, investment and jobs their daily priority.
On Question Period this week we'll talk to Joe Oliver, the minister of natural resources, who wants to speed up and put deadlines on the ability of the National Energy Board and others to get final approvals for major projects, such as pipelines.
We will also speak to Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, who says one of the important matters slowing the Canadian economy down is a shortage of skilled labour, and he intends to do something about it.
In addition, we'll hear from our finance panel of Members of Parliament from all three parties, for their view of the Conservative government's new agenda, which could be titled The Business of Canada is Business.
Not everyone will agree with that narrow definition of what Canada is about.
