On April 11th, the Beedie Ambassadors had the opportunity to attend a Vancouver Board of Trade event featuring Justin Trudeau as the keynote speaker. This day marked Trudeau’s first, and possibly most awaited visit to Vancouver since becoming the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Trudeau’s focus was to keep the Canadian economy growing by focusing on the middle class. He outlined a five principle framework to achieve this: post-secondary education, immigration and trade, environmental stewardship, innovation, and infrastructure.
As a current student I found Trudeau’s most interesting speaking point to be on his post-secondary plans. He intends to raise the post-secondary degree attainment rate to 70% while putting downward pressure on student debt.
Meanwhile he also praised immigration as an important factor in Canada’s growth and applauded Premier Christy Clark’s recent trade mission to South Korea. Trudeau appears to believe that trade with Asia is as vital to the Western Canadian economy as its focus on the natural resource industry.
Focusing domestically, Trudeau plans to increase spending and speed up the timeline of repairing and replacing infrastructure. In comparison, the current Conservative government has pledged $53-billion towards infrastructure in the next ten years. When asked how he will improve on the Conservative’s performance, Trudeau stated that the growing economy is a vital part of his plan.
Lastly, Trudeau focused on the prolonged topic of pipelines and reinstated his support of the Keystone XL pipeline and the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, but not before discussing environmental stewardship. Stewardship, in Trudeau’s case, focuses on sustainable development with respect to not only the environment but also the first nations community’s.
Overall, the hour-long speech was interesting and thought provoking. With a bit over a year remaining until the next federal election in October 2015, expect to see updated plans regarding Trudeau’s five principles.
Alex is going into his third year at the Beedie School of Business, concentrating in Marketing and Finance. Having been involved since his first year, he believes that the student community and extra-curricular experiences are some of the most valuable aspects at Beedie. Along with being a Beedie Ambassador, he is also the President of the Student Marketing Association and has competed at KPMG’s Ace the Case and the Wideman Education Foundation Project Management Competition. These experiences are unique to Beedie, and Alex knows that he would not have had these experiences elsewhere. He is now looking forward to representing the school abroad, to professionals and fellow students alike.