We need to proactively build a solid economy where people can have good lives doing that kind of work.” “There’s going to be the need to build entirely new settlements, entirely new regions of this country. “All work in 2080 is climate work, whether it’s about adaptation, resilience, or infrastructure,” said Dylan Hendricks, a director at the Institute for the Future who attended the conference. On this land-based ‘field trip to the future’, participants visited McMaster Forest Nature Reserve and McMaster Carbon Sink Forest, getting their hands dirty while thinking about the futures of climate change and our natural environment. The forum also featured a symposium with a number of researchers-who received funding from the Future of Canada Project-covering topics in healthcare, Indigenous reconciliation, democratic resilience, and systemic racism.ĭelegates could choose one of five field trips in and around Hamilton to places where they could glimpse the future, including the nuclear reactor at McMaster University’s central campus, a multi-million-dollar waterfront development and rejuvenation project led by the City of Hamilton, and a forest and nature reserve where McMaster scientists are studying atmospheric carbon dioxide and ways to mitigate climate change. “The first step in change is to actually have a sense of where you want to go,” said Peter Padbury, a delegate who recently retired as chief futurist at Policy Horizons Canada. Participants then brainstormed solutions to address concerns about how to replace jobs in an increasingly automated economy, new methods for collective control of our data online to increase security, and protection of Indigenous rights as new land opens up in Canada’s north. Discussion groups focused on areas such as the future of our economy, entrepreneurship in Canada, the impacts of climate-related migration, and more. Larger themes like democratized, local forms of government that help renew civic engagement and focusing on well-being of individuals and society rather than economic growth were realized. But the choice of 2080 allowed attendees to look beyond immediate challenges and broaden the horizon to changes in society, politics, and beyond, while always maintaining a focus on what’s needed to make it happen. Many people think only of technological changes when they imagine the long-term future, such as flying cars, talking robots, etc. chairman and McMaster University chancellor emeritus, Lynton (Red) Wilson, in 2020 with the goal of better understanding the issues and opportunities facing Canada. It was funded by former Bell Canada Enterprises Inc. Imagining 2080 was the culmination of three years of work on the Future of Canada Project. “It’s a big aspiration, to have so many people from so many backgrounds get together and look at what’s next.”įuture of Canada Project researchers, such as McMaster Dean of Social Sciences Jeremiah Hurley pictured here, had the opportunity to share the impacts of their future-focused work at the forum’s research symposium. “I was inspired by the one-on-one conversations,” said Cynthia Roberts Pérez, a forum delegate who works in the museum industry. By thinking about a hopeful future while acknowledging the challenges of the present, forum delegates were meant to choose optimism and envision what life could be like beyond our immediate concerns. The three-day event included a mix of speakers, discussion groups, and experiential workshops that brought together academic researchers, change-makers, and innovators to map out a course to 2080. “If we want the world to be a certain way, it depends on our values and actions today.” “It doesn’t seem that long ago, but the folks making decisions back then built the structure of our country, and it’s massively different,” said Ann Elisabeth Samson, forum organizer and strategic advisor for the Future of Canada Project. The fifty-seven year difference between now and 2080 is the same as 1966 to today-before Pierre Trudeau became prime minister, before computers hit our desks and then our pockets, before Canada even had its own independent constitution. Hosted by the Future of Canada Project at McMaster University, the forum ran November 1–3 in Hamilton, Ontario. That was the key takeaway from “Imagining 2080: A Forum on Canada’s Futures”-a three-day conference focused on what Canada could look like in two generations and what we need to do to get there. I f we want to build a better future by 2080, we need to start working on it now.
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