Castanet

2019 will be the year Canada begins to rule the world

For over 150 years, Canada has just sort of… been there. Tucked away at the outer edge of the global firmament, not quite modest but rarely immodest, we’re the humble power that’s a bit heavy around the middle. We have just enough good sense to offer constructive criticism and ideas to the world: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, peacekeeping and tackling the Suez Crisis, for instance. We tend to join others in morally right conflicts like the Second World War and the first Iraq War and avoid the quagmires, like Vietnam and the second Iraq War. On balance, we do well. And while the major powers have played geopolitical chess, there we were, just keeping time.

Global time keeper is surely not what Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier had in mind when, in a 1904 speech at Toronto’s Massey Hall, he predicted “the 20th century shall be the century of Canada and Canadian development.” With atypical northern swagger, he added: “Canada shall be the start towards which all men who love progress and freedom shall come.”
Laurier wasn’t exactly correct. But he wasn’t mistaken, either. He was just ahead of himself by a century.

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We will never be the world’s largest economy—if we are, we’re all in a trouble. We will never have the greatest military force, which would be troubling too. But that’s good: each is a trap. But going forward, Canada will be comparatively stable and prosperous and trusted—an attractive place for the shining minds of the next half-century. Our politics work. We sit upon extremely valuable resources—not the least of which is fresh water—that will only become more and more important. And we are set to among the best choices for an honest global broker. Now, we are set to begin the peaceful coup of the century—to slip out from the shadows and take a central role in leading the world.

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/20 ... &ocid=iehp