D ELI GHT S| BOOKS
Expats: A secret weapon waiting to be discovered
Christina Spencer
Planet Canada: How Our Expats Are Shaping the Future John Stackhouse Penguin Random House Canada, 2020 351 pages Hardcover: $35 eBook: $16.99 Audiobook download: $32
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Famous Canadians, such as Mark Carney (shown here), who served as governor of the Bank of Canada and then lived abroad as governor of the Bank of England, are potential champions of this country's reputation and influence, according to author John Stackhouse.
Canadians working in Silicon Valley. Rattling off a head-spinning list of expats who have made a mark there — for instance, Carleton University grad Shona Brown, one of the first Canadians at the Googleplex; Ottawa-born Rachel Potvin, responsible for the infrastructure that hosted all of Google’s code; Montrealer Patrick Pichette, former top executive at Bell Canada whom Brown recruited — Stackhouse explains how Canadians in all sorts of high-
tech firms, from the big names to startups, found each other, then connected into a group they dubbed the C-100, a “leading voice for Canadian entrepreneurs at home and abroad.” The C-100 has helped improve some aspects of Canadian domestic policy, such as endorsing fast-track visas so Canada’s entrepreneurs can more easily recruit the people they need from other countries. One member kickstarted an artificial intelligence initiative for Canada. SPRING 2021 | APR-MAY-JUN
POLICY EXCHANGE
At any given time, approximately 2.8 million Canadian citizens live abroad. Many are engaged in innovative — and lucrative — work. They’ve led some of the world’s great academic institutions, such as Princeton, Berkeley and Johns Hopkins. They’ve run the British Royal Mail and the Bank of England. They’ve long been influential in Hollywood: Think James Cameron, Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer, even Alex Trebek. And there are a quarter-million Canadians working in Silicon Valley alone, focused on everything from developing computer language to firing up the global internet gaming industry. What should Canada make of all these talented expats? Federal policymakers act as if they’re simply irrelevant. Some in industry or academia think they represent a serious brain drain. Author John Stackhouse offers a third view: that the Canadian diaspora is a potential champion of this country’s reputation and influence in an increasingly borderless global economy. Planet Canada presents that case through an array of interviews Stackhouse has conducted in recent years with Canadians in high-powered positions abroad. Not only do many of them believe their singularly Canadian character traits have helped them succeed (polite, humble, good listeners — people really do seem to value these stereotypical attributes), they are also genuinely puzzled as to why policymakers at home haven’t tried harder to leverage their success. One example is a group of energetic
