On Change, Leadership and the Boomer Corps

 I’m a retired media guy and writer who watched my RCAF father struggle to hide his deep concern for family and country during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As a teenager, I watched Canada lurch through a national crisis of identity, even as the rest of the world roiled with discontent and social protest.

And here we are at another inflection point.

For all of his failings – and they are legion – Donald Trump has done Canada a positive. We have been sleep-walking as a nation, smugly coasting along as a ‘nice’ country with friendly people. We were ‘peacekeepers’, secure in our G7 membership, harbouring maybe a little condescension about our more violent cousins to the south. And we were also naïve, and a bit disingenuous, expecting a pal to be a pal forever.

That has changed, of course. It’s in the air, it’s in dinner table conversations, it’s in what we see and read in the public space: change needs to come to the way we look at ourselves and act as a nation (including the other national emergency, healthcare). 

So far, we are making the right noises, but it will take more than talk and platitudes: planning and action has to continue in parallel with political realities. The broadest stroke is obvious: less reliance on the United States for anything, be it as a trading partner, a defence partner or even as a rational player in global affairs. That means increasing – and properly targeting – defence spending, not simply meeting an arbitrary minimum percentage of GDP. This message seems to have finally landed. Canada should be on a war footing, literally: as long as countries continue to have malign ambition, we have to be ready and able to resist them.

Another no-brainer is the dropping of internal tariffs. As we rail against tariffs imposed on Canada, we have to have the integrity to look inward and knock down our own internal barriers to collective prosperity.

One of the more interesting ideas floating around is the idea of national service for young Canadians. Norway, Sweden, Denmark and France all have some form of national service, often a foundation for personal growth and career development for younger people.

But here’s another possibility worth exploring: national service for older Canadians. For lack of a better phrase, call it the ‘Boomer Corps’. Tap into the millions of retired Canadians ready and willing to offer their expertise to their communities and their country. Every single individual in this massive cohort comes with the knowledge and experience of a lifetime, in every conceivable discipline. Teachers, medical professionals, police officers, organizational experts, personnel managers, investment gurus, media and communications specialists, military and security advisors, skilled tradespeople, social workers, engineers, food producers- all with decades of experience and a real incentive to contribute to the society in which their children and grandchildren will live and prosper in the years ahead. (Not incidentally, we’ve heard for years how Canada trails other countries in ‘competitiveness’. Imagine what a national service initiative like a ‘Boomer Corps’ could do for that).

For all of this to happen, we need leadership, and we need to maintain our national focus. The worst thing that could happen right now is that rationality somehow magically appears in Trumpians, and we all breathe a sigh of relief and go back to the old coddled ways of coasting along, out of shape, not putting in the work necessary to get fit as a nation.

I’ve been around long enough to remember two existential threats to Canada as a nation, including the real possibility of nuclear war. In 2025, we have another threat, which is the reason proper leadership is so important.

Time to get at it, and get ‘er done.  

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 Tom New, Gatineau, Quebec | May 2025