Prime Minister Paul Martin says
"Canada must prepare for what he calls the two “megadrivers” of the future: an aging and shrinking population in Canada,
and the economic rise of China and India."         
SUSAN DELACOURT OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF - Toronto Star
Oct. 8, 2005. 10:26 AM

OTTAWA—It was former New York state governor Mario Cuomo who once said: "You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose." Some might argue that Canadians, through two major speeches in Ottawa over the past few weeks, have been able to glimpse a little of both.

New Governor General Michaëlle Jean, though not campaigning, waxed toward the poetic at her installation in late September with her talk of no more solitudes in Canada.

It was left to Prime Minister Paul Martin, meanwhile, to articulate the more prosaic, with his so-called "vision" speech for this fall, outlining the main challenges for his minority government. For more than an hour, Martin explained to senior federal public servants why every action of government had to be seized with two big "megadrivers," in the parlance of the bureaucrats. They are:

The aging and shrinking population in Canada.

The rise of India and China as economic superpowers in the years ahead.

"Fifteen years from now, our older, increasingly multi-ethnic population will have altered the face of our nation. Canada will look very different. Fifteen years from now, China and India will have altered the face of global power, politically and economically. The world will look very different," Martin said. "Canada is certainly not alone in facing these changes. But what matters — what will distinguish us — is how we respond."

Immigration Minister Joe Volpe, naturally, is right in the thick of things, after Martin specifically described how the shrinking Canadian population underlines the needs for new immigrants. Within days, Volpe was talking to national reporters about the need to dramatically increase Canada' s intake of immigrants by 100,000 a year to 320,000 annually five years down the road.

And in advance of the speech, Martin delivered a frank message to Volpe about the role he expects the department to play over the coming years in transforming Canada.

"He said we have to be a lot more proactive. He was pretty blunt — `fix the ruddy system' — so we can be efficient in the way that we present ourselves to the world and potential newcomers," Volpe told the Star's Bruce Campion-Smith.

"This is the challenge he threw out: We want to grow the country, we want this place to be a land of opportunity ... but we've got to go out and recruit our own people. We've got to fix the system so we can process people quickly," Volpe said.

"If we're talking about people with skills, we can't be having them wait forever for us to make a decision when opportunity is knocking everywhere else," Volpe said.

'Fifteen years from now, China and India will have altered the face of global power'