There are people who just haven't done as well in a globalized economy.

People follow those who act like leaders, not those who proclaim themselves to be leaders.

We need to give the private sector many more powerful incentives to do research and development, to bring ideas and new discoveries to market in Canada, and commercialize them here, and stay here through successive stages of growth. But they can only do it with better government policies that give them more powerful incentive.

All politics are local, whether in Kabul or in Canada.

The plant goes down. The industry is weaker. The price of the commodity has lagged. Any of those things can push people into unemployment or lower income categories, and that hurts.

It will not be good enough simply to depend on one or two markets, we will need to embrace innovation, decide what we do well, and target those sectors in which, with investment and planning, we could make the whole world our client for keeps.

The story of Taliban recovery and resurgence begins in the places where they took refuge after 2001. And as long as those leadership structures and training structures operate outside of Afghanistan with relative impunity, the conflict will continue.