The Canadian Manifesto

"The bell of opportunity tolls for us, and the world, for once, will listen. It is our turn," writes Conrad Black in this scintillating blueprint for a bolder Canadian future.

Chipper, patient, and courteous, Canada has pursued an improbable destiny as a splendid nation of relatively good and ably self-governing people, but most would agree we have not realized our true potential.

Canada's main chance, writes Black, is now before it…and it is not in the usual realms of military or economic dominance. With the rest of the West engaged in a sterile left-right tug of war, Canada has the opportunity to lead the world to its next stage of development in the arts of government. By transforming itself into a controlled and sensible public policy laboratory, it can forge new solutions to the problems of welfare, education, health care, foreign policy, and other governmental sectors, and make an enormous contribution to the welfare of mankind.

Canada has no excuse not to lead in this field, argues Black, who offers nineteen visionary policy proposals of his own. He claims that this "is the destiny, and the vocation, Canada could have, not in the next century, but in the next five years of imaginative government."