It’s a book deal most Canadian authors would kill for. Todd Hirsch is a senior economist at ATB Financial and Robert Roach is a senior researcher at the Canada West Foundation. They haven’t written a book yet but they’re working on it. It even has a double-barrelled title — Rewriting the Code: Changing Canada’s Economic DNA.
Sounds like a real page-turner for the kind of summer we’ve had, with more rainy days than sunny ones.
You can’t buy the book yet but already the authors are getting great press. So why not just join in and take a look at one idea the authors propose to help Alberta expand its outlook and have the choices we want, when the world eventually moves from dependence on fossil fuels.
In the first of a series of articles to promote their thesis, Roach opens to suggest we encourage our young people to leave the province — or better yet, the country. Not forever, but for a one- or two-year walkabout, to see how other societies face their problems.
Then, with the benefit of worldly experience, they should return with fresh ideas to Alberta.
There was a time when education was not as expensive as it is today and when a general arts degree meant that your mind had been exposed to different lines of thinking than what they cram into you in technical schools. Without the crushing burden of student loans, or the extreme competition for jobs, 20-somethings once regularly did just what Hirsch and Roach are proposing. They bummed around Europe, Australia or the Middle East, getting jobs here and there before returning to either complete their degrees or start their careers.
I can remember in my years at university talking over coffee with students, and to me, they seemed so much more . . . mondial.
The idea was a good one then and it is now, but Roach wants Albertans to expand it into a cultural norm. They want Alberta to build a society where almost everyone has had a good look outside our borders — including some work experience — to give us an edge in solving all kinds of problems.
If Alberta is to be a leader in innovation for the next phase of the global economy, they’re going to need a wider view than we can provide.
Homegrown experience, the authors believe, works well for homegrown industries — the innovations we’ve brought to oil and gas development stand as a shining example. But do we have another homegrown industry in the wings, waiting for the next industrial revolution?
Roach points to the old warehouses of Manhattan where thousands once toiled, which have been converted to new uses. He also mentions the empty skyscrapers of Detroit, where innovation did not occur.
Lessons learned in travel, plus exposure to people who have seen how things are done in other places may provide the spark to create opportunities in industries that don’t even exist yet. Well, that’s the theory.
Doubtless the authors will expand their ideas when they complete the book. But we can begin thinking about the thesis now.
Leadership to move Alberta forward in this century will not come from the current generation in power. It will come from the young.
Travel broadens one’s horizons, they say. Could that be Alberta’s edge to building the future?