Waterloo, Ontario

Thank you. Good afternoon.

I want to thank Joan (Fisk), Diane (Wolfenden), and the rest of the Chamber’s leadership for the invitation to join you today.

It’s a privilege to talk to business leaders of the Greater Kitchener-Waterloo area.

Your Chamber has an enviable record of achievement.

You brought hydro to the region. Led the move towards municipal ownership of basic transit, helped bring about an affordable phone system, and spearheaded creation of the Federation of Charities.

And of course, the Chamber created the Physician Recruitment Task Force to assist 40,000 local residents who were without a family doctor.

It is hard for me to offer any further wisdom to the very group that began Oktoberfest.

I’m glad to be introduced by my friend and colleague—Karen Redman.

Andrew Telegdi is also here today, and so I’ll quote the Chamber’s own “Advocate” magazine:

“Andrew Telegdi and Karen Redman represented their constituents in an exemplary manner for over a decade and the community has benefitted from their many achievements.”

Marc Garneau, Canada’s first astronaut and a national hero, is also with us today. Marc’s a true pioneer who also moonlights as a Member of Parliament.

We’re fortunate in the Liberal caucus to have Marc as our Industry, Science and Technology critic—the man is actually a rocket scientist.

I want to talk with you about fostering big ideas and bright ideas during a deep recession, about Canadian leadership in crisis, and about the future of our economy.

We’re at a moment of turmoil and uncertainty for Canadian workers and communities.

You’re feeling it here in Kitchener-Waterloo. The number of families helped by the Waterloo Region food bank has doubled since the start of the year, and the number of children who rely on the food bank has reached 5,000.

Protecting the most vulnerable during this crisis has to be our first priority. But we also can’t neglect our obligation to plan for the future, and to start creating tomorrow’s opportunities today.

Times of crisis foreshorten our time horizons. We think small. We think short.
The next paycheck. The next mortgage payment. The next loan repayment.

Governments start doing the same thing. Our current government is doing that: just trying to survive till the summer, in fact.

Canadians want us to do better. They want us to push the time horizons back. Think long, not short, think big, not small.

Kitchener Waterloo, with its unique combination of learning and entrepeneurship, has set the pace in Canada for thinking long, for thinking big.

In these uncertain times for our scientists and researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs, this region is still creating new possibility.

Stephen Hawking is about to begin his first term in residence at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, here in Waterloo.

Google is setting up shop in town, and Bill Gates is becoming a regular travelling act in the region.

And technology developed here is responsible for Michelle Obama’s becoming the first U.S. First Lady ever to have to tell her husband to put away his BlackBerry at the dinner table.

We should celebrate these successes. We should celebrate the communities that made them possible.

But we can’t build our future solely on the remarkable achievements of our recent past.

We have to empower our people to imagine the next big thing—but how?

I’m part of the generation that was coming of age when the Americans put a man on the moon. An American president looked to the night sky in 1960, said that men would tread there, and by the end of that decade it was so.

The moon landing was the final consummation of a million microscopic breakthroughs, each of them the product of risk and reward, all of them united by a common sense of possibility.

That’s what science is—the miracle by which small steps become giant leaps.

I’m not going to tell you that Canada should put a man on the moon.

For one thing, I want to keep Marc right where he is.

But what I will tell you is this—we need small steps. We need ideas. We need them now more than ever.

We have to invest in the small businesses that will become tomorrow’s success stories.

We have to support the small breakthroughs that will become tomorrow’s new technologies.

We have to empower our innovators and entrepreneurs to take risks—and we have to keep them working in Canada—in Kitchener and Waterloo and right across the country.

Remember that Canada’s Technology Triangle began with a single computer course in the math department at Waterloo, 50 years ago.

If we maintain our commitment, patience, vision, and a relentless sense of possibility, we will lead the world in the 21st century.

I’m here today to tell you that my Party and I are ready.

We will sustain Canada’s research profile in our post-secondary institutions.

We will assist the private sector to increase its R & D.

We will partner successfully to move products from the lab to the marketplace.

We will enable discovery by encouraging discoverers, not by picking winners and losers in the marketplace of ideas.

That means funding basic science. I’ve learned from that great Canadian scientist, John Polanyi, that research with no obvious initial commercial application often turns out to be the research with the biggest human return of all.

So we should expect returns, but only incrementally.

If we are serious about creating the jobs of tomorrow, then we will need the discipline to maintain our commitments. Even when they don’t produce headlines—and even when that means thinking far beyond the next election.

We need to set priorities without disturbing the balance between applied science and fundamental science or prioritizing certain areas over others.

And we will need the vision to commit to long-term, stable funding that enables our world-leading research teams to plan, to recruit the best and brightest, and to move us forward together.

We need a bipartisan political consensus in favour of science and technology investment in this country for the long-term.

The question is not whether the jobs of the 21st century economy will be created. The question is where.

I want them to be here. I want them to be here in Canada. I want them to be in Kitchener-Waterloo.

The competition will be fierce. And as we speak, Canada is falling behind.

In their January budget, the Conservative government made choices that stand to undermine Canada’s ability to compete for the jobs of tomorrow.

They cut millions from our research councils. They left major programs unfunded.

They left Genome Canada out of the budget altogether, and that organization has now pulled out of a major Canadian-led international effort to map the genetic circuitry of stem cells.

I have said often that when the Conservatives are right, I will support them—and, accordingly, my Party and I backed the budget’s pledge to fund of one-third of the Institute for Quantum Computing at UW.

But when the Conservatives are wrong, I will oppose them.

Adjusted for inflation, federal funding for science and technology has fallen each year since the Conservatives took office.

Adding insult to injury, funding for science and research was the only area of spending to receive a major cut in the budget.

That approach is one that fails the future.

On every score, we are being outpaced by the competition.

On a per capita basis, the Obama administration will invest six times more in the knowledge-based economy—a total of $65 billion over the next two years.

We’re losing talent to the United States, to Australia and Europe, when we can’t afford to be losing it at all.

We can’t afford for the jobs of tomorrow to be created elsewhere. Not when unemployment in Kitchener is at 9 percent, and 70 percent more people here are lining up for EI.

Not when your neighbours and friends have lost their jobs at Kitchener Frame, MTD, Bauer, Softcare, Beckermann Kitchens, Ledco, and Collins and Aikman.

Not when this region now has the third highest rate of unemployment in the country.

Now, more than ever, we need to build on the investments made during the last decade, when Liberal governments—

Committed billions for new research—

More than doubled the budgets of the research councils—

And created the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Canada Graduate Scholarships, the Canada Research Chairs, and Genome Canada.

And we need to invest in the social infrastructure that makes scientific advancement possible.

We must give our children the tools they need to dream beyond our own imaginations, from early childhood learning right through college or university—and beyond.

We need to make the opportunities of the 21st century economy available to all Canadians, with EI that delivers, skills training that works, and social housing that doesn’t let anyone fall through the cracks.

We need to reclaim Canada’s global leadership, by building communities that attract, retain and sustain the very best.

Kitchener-Waterloo has always been one of those communities. We have to make sure it stays that way.

We often say that, “youth will be served.” Well, think about it. The BlackBerry is ten years old. Open Text is 15 and Maplesoft is 20.

Together, we need to find the ways to encourage a bright college student working in the garage to start the next Research in Motion.

We need to help fund the advanced research that will make possible the next Maple 12,

And we have to appreciate that research work can produce unexpected triumphs – so that a project on the Oxford English Dictionary results in the Open Text search engine.

The challenge is immense and the stakes are high.

Liberals understood long ago that, if we are to compete with other countries, the Canadian scientific and research community needs a federal partner.

We provided that partnership until 2006. Under my leadership, we will provide it again.

This community needs compassionate, creative, co-operative and competent government.

You will have it from us.

And when you have it, there is no limit to what this region can do for its citizens, and for the whole country.

Thank you.