I hope I'm not going to stray too far here, but I used to do a lot of consulting work in Japan. Japan puts the common good ahead of the individual good quite often. They're good at pulling in the same direction. It takes a while to get there, but then they set common goals. They also have national standards. It has always disappointed me that in our federal system here we have very few national standards on almost anything, especially for water and certain key environmental issues. For me, one of the things that appeal to me about this is that instead of delegating once again to the provinces or the municipalities or us individual Canadians, it would set national standards for timetables and achievable targets at a national level and we'd show national leadership.
On June 18th, 2009. See this statement in context.