{"id":1176,"date":"2006-11-21T14:59:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-21T19:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1176"},"modified":"2006-11-21T14:59:00","modified_gmt":"2006-11-21T19:59:00","slug":"one-on-one-with-gk-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1176","title":{"rendered":"One on One with GK – part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

You can read the first part of this interview here<\/a>. Stay tuned for Bob tomorrow,<\/p>\n

5. You\u2019ve proposed a <\/em><\/strong>national learning strategy<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. As a former education minister are you at all concerned about the federal government going into provincial jurisdictions?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

What I\u2019m saying is that we need<\/em> a national learning strategy. The federal government is in a position to do a lot of good working with the provinces. The provincial ministers know they need to step up and provide some form of national standards and co-operation to keep up with what\u2019s happening internationally. What they will generally say is that they don\u2019t have the resources. The federal government has to ensure that we don\u2019t have any excuses for not keeping up.<\/p>\n

The OECD study showed a 37% increase in enrolment in post-secondary education among the countries we compete with and in Canada it was 3%. We simply cannot advantage ourselves if we don\u2019t find a way to have a consistent means of investing in education.<\/p>\n

The jurisdictional part can be respected to a good degree. But like other challenges we have, we need a new way to collaborate with the provinces. What we need to ask is what power sharing arrangement will work best for the country? All of our efforts need to be focused on allowing us to compete with the global economy. I\u2019m less interested in historical areas of jurisdiction but I am respectful of them. The provinces understand that they need to step up and set some national standards. The provinces need to step up and set those standards themselves but if that doesn\u2019t happen, I\u2019m determined to make it happen anyways.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re going to have a national daycare program and it\u2019s going to be early learning. It will likely be even more focused than the effort we had before the last election. And we will have a catch-up in terms of research and development and post-secondary for funding, but those things need to come with an assurance of access and quality. There\u2019s no other way we can get the Canadian public to see these investments are worthwhile. There\u2019s no such thing as blank cheque federalism \u2013 federalism works both ways.<\/p>\n

6. Any final thoughts on the campaign as we approach the convention?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

What I\u2019m trying to get to people right now is making sure that they understand the real price of admission and the real way to get success. There\u2019s no shortcut available to us. I\u2019m recommending a lot of hard work for the Liberal Party and it\u2019s members and what I think is that we have to accept that politics have changed \u2013 the question is will the Liberal Party change? That doesn\u2019t just mean the internal reforms. They matter but there’s more which needs to be done.<\/p>\n

The global economy is changing us and we haven\u2019t sufficiently taken charge of that change. We also have an international community which needs leadership to come from Canada. It\u2019s an ambition that I think Liberals need to contend with now. We can\u2019t simply think about getting back without first thinking about why. Why does this country need Liberals? My counsel is that for those who think it\u2019s simply going to be a reaction to Stephen Harper and we\u2019re better than the other guys, is that those days are gone. There was a poll yesterday that said 62% of Canadians say we\u2019re not ready to govern yet. It\u2019s an earned priviledge. I\u2019m hoping to make that a visceral issue. It\u2019s about good jobs in some parts of the country. It\u2019s about sustained growth, not just boom and bust cycles. It\u2019s about a sense of purposes. I believe leadership isn\u2019t just about spending money, it\u2019s also about being prepared to lead the whole country, not just the federal departments. It\u2019s about forging consensus with the municipal government, the provinces, the business sector, the world of labour, not for profits, and citizens at large. For me this is a condition we\u2019ve fallen away from and we need to go after it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m asking for a mandate to do two things. To make the Liberal Party one which will function again and will work in a much more effective way. The second thing is that I want to put forward a fairly ambitious view as to where we want to go long term. Tell Canadians that we want back in because we\u2019re needed, not because we\u2019re tired of these guys or that we think we\u2019re entitled to it.<\/p>\n

7. I\u2019ve asked a lot of the other candidates this as well. For you, who would you have voted for on the Greatest Canadian show the CBC did a few years back?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Some people out there like Jean Vanier are pretty underrated in terms of what they did. He did a world based movement to respect people with disabilities and really committed himself thoroughly to changing the whole way people with mental disabilities are treated.<\/p>\n

I still think doesn’t get enough credit, not for inventing everything, but for what he got done. We have very little that\u2019s essential to the country that wasn\u2019t invented in the 60s and 70s and that\u2019s more a comment on the rest of us.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to think of a good answer because I do believe we need to celebrate the people who set the mark and moved things along and Jean Vanier is often one who doesn\u2019t get noticed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can read the first part of this interview here. Stay tuned for Bob tomorrow, 5. You\u2019ve proposed a national learning strategy. As a former education minister are you at all concerned about the federal government going into provincial jurisdictions? What I\u2019m saying is that we need a national learning strategy. The federal government is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}