Governments too were criticized. Workshop participants seemed to feel that the post-war model of government as welfare state, providing everything no matter what is no longer viable. From having largely concerned itself with redistributing' wealth, it was felt, government must move to helping plan and bring about the generation of wealth. From a reactive role protecting and propping up Canadian industry, participants anticipated government moving to a more pro-active role providing the enabling environment for innovation and new industrial initiatives. This will require more long-term planning freed from partisan considerations -- one assumes on industry's part as well as governments.

At least half of the workshop discussions dealt with education: the challenge of mobilizing Canadians in a wholesale readjustment reeducation retraining process, essentially during this decade. Almost universally, participants criticized a too specialized skills training approach as inappropriate, and instead they called for a solid basic education as the best basis for flexibility. Participants called for not only a new approach to the content of education and training but also for a new role of education in society, a new approach to it and a rethinking of who's responsible for education.

Content: There was a call back to the basics, but redefined as good communication and listening skills, good reasoning skills and an aptitude for rigorous thinking for problem solving. We also need to reemphasize the importance of a good liberal arts education, to prepare young people for the value judgments associated with finding the appropriate roles for the new technologies in our society -- defining the limits and the moral sign-posts in such fields as genetic engineering.

Coping skills were stressed, as well as the need for more relevant career counseling, particularly among young women.

The role of education: Here participants stressed the evolution of education from something fairly static and completed by age 18 or 21 to a process of lifelong learning with attendant implications for personal responsibility, for human resource planning and policy making -- for instance, paid education leave. The status or importance of education/learning in our society must rise in tandem with our need for a knowledgeable, adaptable and innovative population, which will be the key natural resource of the emerging knowledge-based post-industrial era.

New approach to education: The thrust of education is shifting from what to learn to how to learn. Informal learning must be acknowledged and given more emphasis. Touching on this, co-op work-study programs are seen as a model for the future, allowing for a closer linkage between research and application, between learning and working and the McLuhan concept of learning a living.

Responsibility for education: There was a surprisingly broad consensus that while government-funded education should emphasize the basics and generic skills, industry is better placed to look after applied skills training, where general abilities are adapted and fine-tuned to a particular working environment. Although Canadian industry has traditionally provided only minimal training, some of the new high-tech companies training programs indicate that this is changing.

While education got a thorough airing, questions related to the organization of work and jobs did not. Regarding predicted job losses and technological unemployment, the general feeling seemed to be: we've heard enough about the negative aspects; let's get on with the opportunities. In one workshop, an academic involved in business administration remarked: "We're here to talk about profits." In another workshop, when one participant raised the issue of laid-off workers and asked what was to be done with them, another participant quipped: "screw them."