The marginal tax rate for high income earners is going up. Small businesses are no longer enjoying some of the exemption from payroll tax. Now there will be carbon taxes.

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.

Great leaders do not see people for who they are, but who than can become. Further, the great leader compels those that follow them to become that man or woman of the future, likely exceeding the expectations of both.

As Believers, we shine brightest in a sad and dark world; like a diamond that illuminates best when placed on black velvet.

Karzai is Afghanistan's first democratically elected president. He brought the international community into partnership on an unprecedented level, and he championed a new constitution that is liberal, democratic and still very Afghan. All of that does reflect a vision. But he's presided over a country that is still in conflict, and he hasn't taken some of the difficult decisions his own government wanted him to take. On corruption, he hasn't been as decisive as he should've been. There are legitimate questions about him.

Despite 18 years as a non-partisan public servant, my deeper "tribal" affinity has always been Tory. The Afghanistan file has given me an additional reason to cleave to that side of the spectrum. Canadian Conservatives have generally been more comfortable and confident with hard security issues.

We Canadians need, as a country, to be much more present globally than we have been today.