Ambitious Canada Part 4: What is Special About Canada?

After criticizing boring Canadian ideas and making fun of attempts to be US-light, many of you challenged me: it’s easy to tear things down; what do we build in their place?

We can’t do anything until we answer the stereotypically Canadian question: What is actually special about Canada?

I know, it’s a running joke that Canadians aren’t able to say what is unique about us. But how can we chart a bold new course for the country if we’re missing a compass?

The One Question We Are Built to Answer

In an era of global anxiety, where people have lost faith in old models of success, the entire Canadian project can be seen as an attempt to answer the one question the world is desperately asking:

Can a nation be wildly prosperous and ambitious while also being deeply considerate and inclusive? Or must we always choose one over the other?

Consider how the early architects of our universal healthcare system saw a flourishing economy as requiring a healthy, supported workforce. This tension is in our DNA.

The prevailing US economic mindset demands a zero-sum calculation: that consideration is a cost center, and ambition must be unregulated. This is what fuels the overfocus on “wokeness” and DEI; the fear is that stopping to consider the systemic side-effects of progress is inherently anti-progress.

Canada’s quiet, radical experiment is to prove that this is a false choice. Our national mission is to build a society where you don’t have to sacrifice compassion for progress, or trade fairness for wealth. In fact, dare I say it… we can build an even more prosperous society if we are thoughtful about it.

Our Mission to the World

This isn’t just a domestic project; it is our unique value proposition to the world.

While our neighbour talks about a singularly financial dream, our mission is to pursue something bigger. It is a call to make a more ambitious sacrifice–not just for personal gain, but for the creation of a society that is both dynamic and decent.

This is how we inspire. This is how we recruit the world’s best and brightest and ask them to plant their roots here, raise their kids here, build their companies here. We don’t just offer them a job; we offer them a chance to participate in answering the most important question of our time. People across the globe want the answer to be “yes, you can (and must) have both.” It is up to us to prove it.

Going forward, this is the quality we must lean into. Every major policy, every big project, every ambitious startup we launch must be a way of exploring this question. We stop being “US-light” the moment we start demanding that our greatest national successes–whether in AI, energy, or urban planning–are inherently, measurably, and uniquely Canadian in their ambition and their decency. We laugh at others who are afraid to strive for both ideals.

Let’s be the answer the world is looking for.