Walter Gordon Symposium — Canada 2050: Visions of the Future

This year’s Walter Gordon Symposium is entitled “Canada 2050: Visions of the Future”. It aims to explore how Canadian public policy decisions today will impact crucial issues in the future, such as inclusiveness, diversity, growth, and innovation. 

The symposium will feature a lunch-time Keynote address by Doug Saunders, author of “Maximum Canada.” Saunders will outline some important policy concerns facing Canada today, and the potential impacts that policy decisions made now could have on Canada’s future. 

Throughout the day, there will be a series of panels discussing these questions in relation to specific topics. The topics for the panels are: Canada's Future Population; The Future of Canada's Cities; The Future of Canada's Resources; and The Future of Work in Canada. 

We hope this cross-section of panels will allow us to reflect on how far Canada has come and stimulate discussion on the direction we want Canada to go.

Inaugurated in 1990 in honour of the distinguished Canadian statesman and public servant, the late Hon. Walter Gordon, the annual Walter Gordon Symposium is made possible by generously granted seed monies from the Walter and Duncan Gordon Charitable Foundation and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.

On the organizing committee of this year’s symposium were Junior Fellows Sharly Chan, Maddy DeWelles, Francesco Ducci, Jamie Duncan, Charlie Katrycz, Ryan Phillips, Julian Posada, Zoe Sebastien, Kehna Sood, and Anjum Sultana; and Munk School students Saif Alnuweiri, Nuri Kim, and Arpit Kumar. Senior Fellows Tom Axworthy and Carolyn Tuohy counselled this committee in their planning of the symposium.

Agenda

8:00 a.m. - Registration and Breakfast

8:45 a.m. - Opening Remarks

9:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. - Canada’s Future Population

• Charles Foran -- Massey College Senior Fellow, former CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, past President of PEN Canada, and author, among other books, of Mordecai Richler
• Harold Malcolmson -- former Senior Officer at the Ontario Securities Commission and Project Leader on international assignments for the World Bank, The Asian Development Bank, and the United Nations, and a member of the Massey College Quadrangle Society;
• William Robson -- Massey College Senior Fellow, President and CEO of the C.D. Howe Institute, and Instructor at the Munk School; and
• Robert Steiner -- Director of Fellowships in Global Journalism at the Munk School, former Assistant Vice President at U of T in charge of Strategic Communications, and a member of the Quadrangle Society
• Moderated by Phil Triadafilopoulos -- Associate Professor of Political Science at U of T, Scarborough, and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

10:15 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. - The Future of Canada’s Cities

• Nasma Ahmed -- Director of the Digital Justice Lab
• Gregg Lintern -- Chief Planner for the City of Toronto, who has led, among other projects, the Port Lands Planning Framework and Billy Bishop Airport; and
• Bianca Wylie -- co-founder of Tech Reset Canada, and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in the Global Economy program.
• Moderated by Stefan Novakovic -- Associate Editor at Canadian Architect, Canadian Interiors, and Building magazines

11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. - Lunch

12:15 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. - Keynote: The Right People in the Right Places: Planning for a Larger Canada

• Doug Saunders -- International-Affairs Columnist at the Globe & Mail, and Author of Arrival City: The Final Migration and Our Next World, The Myth of the Muslim Tide, and Maximum Canada

1:30 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. - The Future of Canada’s Resources

• Jean Paul Gladu -- President and CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB)
• Marla Orenstein -- Director of the Natural Resources Centre
• Tom Rand -- Managing Partner at ArcTern Ventures and Senior Advisor at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto
• Moderated by Shawn McCarthy -- national business correspondent for the Globe & Mail

2:45 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. - The Future of Work in Canada

• Carlo Fanelli -- Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Work and Labour Studies in the Department of Social Science at York University, and author of Megacity Malaise: Neoliberalism, Public Services and Labour in Toronto
• Sunil Johal -- Policy Director at the Mowat Centre, an independent public policy think tank at the University of Toronto
• AJ Tibando -- Executive Director of Palette Inc. and a Fellow at the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship
• Moderated by Sheila Block -- a senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

4:00 p.m. - Closing Remarks

Registration

FREE

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