Blueprints for a Bold Future: Leadership, Vision, Strategy in Action | William C. | TEDxTFS Youth
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsz99eCOnZY Video ID: dsz99eCOnZY ============================================================ Transcriber: Abdullah Al Hashel Reviewer: Zeynep Yagci Today I want to talk about something powerful. The sheer magnitude of our potential, not just as students, but as Canadians. Success begins with thinking big, reflecting deeply, and acting boldly. Let's take the moral to heart and push the boundaries of what's possible, not just for ourselves, but for our entire nation. Because if there’s one thing history teaches us that young minds like ours have changed the course of history before and do it again. But first, you have to understand you're up against. Because Canada is at a crossroads. Our biggest enemy is not some foreign presence. It's internal division and complacency. We have to learn from the past to lead the future, to let us look back into history. Imagine the end of 1945. World War 2 was ended, Japan was bombed, and China was in a civil war. It all seemed hopeless. But then there were the four Asian tigers South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. They turned ruin into power and became economic giants. Take Singapore, for example. In 1965, it was a small, struggling port city with its own natural resources. Now it's a top financial hub. What's the secret sauce behind a tiny island nation becoming so successful? It's because they attract foreign investments, prioritize education and invest in infrastructure. Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding father, didn’t react to problems; he anticipated them. He didn’t just hope for change. He engineered it. He knew what he was doing and he got the job done. In stark contrast to Mao Zedong, who was ruling China at the time, despite China's vast potential, it struggled under disaster policies like the Great Leap Forward, an effort to modernize the country that results in economic collapse and famine. Specifically, between 1958 and 1962, up to 45 million lives were lost due to his mistakes. And it wasn’t until 1976, however, astronaut’s death, which kind of realized it was time for a change, and that change brought Deng Xiaoping came In 1978, China’s pivotal year Deng broke free from rigid ideology, taking a page out of Singapore's playbook by adopting elements of capitalism and opening up the country to the markets. He unleashed China's full economic engine and transformed it into the world's second largest economy, a testament to its focus on long term strategy and vision, choosing the centennial last. Let's be honest does anyone actually believe our politics are effective? Most likely, the answer is no. And that's because we lack a vision. Our politics are focused on the short term issues instead of Canada's long term prosperity, making us reactive and not proactive. Our provinces are divided. Canada's national trade makes up only one third of our economy, while the rest is international. That's because of interprovincial trade regulations that make trade either to other too expensive or just unaccessible at all. Even worse, Alberta sends over 4 million barrels of oil daily to the US, largely at a steep discount, while eastern Canada still imports oil from Saudi Arabia. Why? We don't have the pipelines or the energy policy to connect our own country. Also, to the import or oil basket at a higher price, but at a cheaper price. And finally, over the past ten years, compared to the US, Singapore and China, in as often as not, population has soared as 60% to three times that of the US, while its GDP per capita grew by 40% of the US's and only 23%. All of this is a highly multifaceted issue, and there are many reasons behind this. Experts from the C.D. Howe Institute, the Bank of Canada and Government of Canada agree that Canada has not taken a strategic approach to immigration. We’ve not taken enough immigrants in areas where we’re lacking workers like health care, and we’ve taken too many in areas where we have the workers and we have the workforce. Also, Canada has not invested at the same pace as the US in AI, clean energy and quantum computing. We are lacking the hand we were lacking behind. Canada does not have the scale or in our investments to make us more prosperous. We have to align people and progress. But here's the good news if China and the four Asian tigers would build their economy from the ground up, so can we, and we can be even better. That's because the Asian Tigers did not have our abundance of natural resources. Canada has the third largest supply of fresh water, vast force, and massive oil and uranium in reserve. Let's get to work. Here are five steps you can take today to succeed. Firstly, you have to act as one nation. This means that we are no longer 13 separate economies with ten provinces and three territories, each with their own rules. But we are one Canada, the true North, strong and free. This means getting rid of all differing interprovincial trade regulations to make trade cheaper and more accessible. We can respect interprovincial differences, but we must share a common vision of how Canada can be and how we get there. We have to create a national plan to responsibly, to responsibly develop our energy and our natural resources. All this increases our GDP by up to $330 billion a year. Second, we have to join more alliances with our allies. This means entering more partnerships with the EU, Japan and Australia because together they have over $20 trillion in market share and we can create more innovation based alliances, security based alliances to help Canada grow and succeed in the 21st century. Third, we need a strategic immigration program. What this means is having a merit based system to attract the best of the best, the skilled workers that we need to fill our jobs and investors to bring in wealth and resources into our country. If we struck a balance between financial and population growth, Canada will be the most prosperous country on Earth, and we have to get our social support system from hands out, the hands up. What this means is instead of relying on handouts, instead of creating dependency, you have to give empowered and worthy citizens the tools to rise, thrive, and contribute to our incredible country. And finally, we have to invest in small industries. This means Canada has to bet big on AI and space, because these are technology that the backbone of future jobs, security and progress. The countries that master them will shape the future. To get there, we need to cut red tape and exploit our natural resources not just to don't just to export them and sell them to other countries, but to fuel innovation right here at home. And now, our moment as proud of as Germans and Canadians. The question isn't just how great we want to be, it's how we get there. We live through three technological revolutions over the past 300 years the steam engine, electricity and the digital age. Now we’re entering the fourth: artificial intelligence. AI is changing everything: work, thought, and life itself. R&D matters, not just to survive, but to lead. We are the generation that will define Canada's next chapter. Not by hoping, not by waiting, but by leading. So let's stop asking who will shape Canada and start being the answer. Thank you. (Applause)