Canada S Economy What Path What Future

In 1982 the Macdonald Commission began its $20-million mission to find a consensus on Canada's future. The commission held hearings in 28 towns and cities, met with 700 concerned parties and assembled nearly 40,000 pages of testimony. In his Report, Commission chair Donald S. Macdonald announced Canada must make a "leap of faith" and embrace free trade with the U.S., apparently signalling the victory of a globalizing, corporate vision of the country's development. The Other Macdonald Report reopens the debate, presenting twenty key submissions to the Commission by organizations such as the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, the United Auto Workers, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, the Canadian Mental Health Association and the National Farmers Union. Together these groups offer a vision of Canada where human needs take priority over capital and technology. The Other Macdonald Report offers alternatives to the corporate vision for Canada's future, alternatives forged during the vibrant free trade debates of the mid-1980s.

A collection of essays by twenty-three of Canada's leading economic geographers, Canada and the Global Economy is a comprehensive study of the evolving economic and geographic patterns of Canadian development. It provides a benchmark for research on the spatial development of the Canadian economy. The contributors explore four central themes: the locational impacts of the openness of the Canadian economy, Canada's relatively simple economic geography in terms of regional variations in resources and urban development, the problems of keeping pace with rapid advances in technology, and the role of government in maintaining a national market and assisting economic development. They outline the essential elements of Canada's contemporary economic geography and highlight the origins and spatial imprint of change in the Canadian economy; in particular they provide an assessment of Canada's participation in significant international patterns of economic change. Canada and the Global Economy is concerned not only with the economic size and location of consumption and production but also with institutional changes and shifts in employment, the sectoral composition of economic activity, and the organizational structure and locational behaviour of particular industries and firms. Special attention is given to the technological development of both established industries and new service and manufacturing activities. A timely addition to the field, it provides a geographic perspective on significant changes in jobs and types of work that result from the transformation of economic activities.