Canada 150 Project: 150 Years of Canada's Global Contributions

As Canada commemorates the 150th anniversary of its confederation in 1867, the Canada 150 Project charts and considers the country's global contributions, especially in shaping world order through innovative international institutions and ideas. It explores Canada's performance in achieving at home its national interests of survival, security, sovereignty, territory, legitimacy and relative capability, and promoting abroad its distinctive national values of antimilitarism, openness, environmentalism, globalism and international institutionalization. Canada is one of the world's oldest consequential powers, untouched since 1812 by invasion, civil war, violent regime change or separatism, and acquiring the world's second largest territory and longest coastline, with borders on the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans and abundant natural resources and ecological assets.

Canada's performance has been driven by inclusiveness, starting with the indigenous peoples welcoming the first immigrants and helping them adapt to the challenging natural environment, and continuing with successive communities of old and newer Canadians coming together in their diversity in innovative, mutually enriching ways. Yet the many scars on this historical record show that there remains much to be done, in reconciliation and in mobilizing a more unified Canada to contribute more to a troubled world in a distinctively Canadian way. This task can begin by focusing on the priorities chosen for Canada 150: youth empowerment, the environment, diversity and inclusiveness, and reconciliation.