I am writing this aboard a train returning to Ottawa following last night’s Public Policy Forum Testimonial Dinner in Toronto at the Royal York . Outside the window, Ontario passes by in fragments: Industrial buildings, rail yards, small towns, logistics hubs, farmland, aging infrastructure, and the quiet evidence of the productive economy that sustains much of Canada’s prosperity.

The conversations at the dinner repeatedly returned to a common theme. Canada needs to get out of its own way.

Not through recklessness or by abandoning good governance, but by rediscovering confidence in our own capabilities. We need to build faster, innovate faster, and empower productive people and institutions to solve problems. We need to stop assuming scarcity in a country still rich in human capital, natural resources, institutional stability, and global credibility.

As the world becomes more unstable and fragmented, countries are increasingly searching for trustworthy partners. Canada still possesses many of the qualities the world is looking for: Competence, stability, talent, resources, and credibility.

Sitting on this train, reflecting on those conversations while rereading Adam Smith on the 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations, I cannot help but feel that many of the questions Canada faces today are deeply connected to ideas Smith explored more than two centuries ago.

I also recognize I am far from the first person to reflect on Adam Smith this year. Many scholars, economists, and commentators have revisited his work on this anniversary. My perspective is simply a personal one.

I was named Adam Smith in 1976, the 200th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations. I first encountered Smith’s writings many years ago, but rereading them now, after years working in politics, banking, and technology, they feel remarkably different. More urgent. More human. More relevant to the present moment than I expected.

One of the greatest misunderstandings about Adam Smith is that he was merely an advocate for selfishness or unfettered capitalism. He was not.

Smith understood the extraordinary power of markets, entrepreneurship, specialization, and trade to generate prosperity. But he also understood that markets alone cannot sustain civilization.

Long before writing The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments, a work deeply concerned with morality, justice, social cohesion, self-command, and the invisible emotional architecture that allows societies to function.

Smith believed prosperous societies depended not merely on commerce, but on trust.

Trust that laws would be applied fairly. Trust that institutions served the broader public good. Trust that individuals would act with restraint, responsibility, and reciprocity. Trust that society itself possessed a shared moral framework strong enough to hold together people with differing interests and ambitions.

That insight feels particularly relevant today.

Canada’s challenges are not simply economic. They are institutional, cultural, and moral. We increasingly struggle to distinguish between productive governance and bureaucratic paralysis. We have created systems that too often reward proximity to institutions instead of productivity, innovation, or risk-taking. Entrepreneurs and builders increasingly feel they must seek permission rather than pursue opportunity.

Smith warned repeatedly about systems that become distorted by concentrated power, monopoly behaviour, rent-seeking, and institutional self-interest. He understood that governments, corporations, guilds, and elites all possess incentives that can drift away from the broader interests of society if left unchecked.

In modern terms, he would likely recognize many of the same dangers in regulatory capture, digital monopolies, excessive administrative complexity, and systems that quietly dampen entrepreneurial ambition.

At the same time, Smith would certainly reject the simplistic idea that human beings are motivated solely by self-interest.

Anyone who has raised children, built a company, served a community, cared for a family member, or sacrificed for something larger than themselves understands this intuitively. Human beings seek meaning, dignity, recognition, fairness, and belonging. Economic prosperity matters enormously, but people also need to believe the society around them is fundamentally just.

That may be one of the central tensions emerging across many Western democracies today.

A society cannot remain cohesive if large numbers of people begin to feel institutions no longer apply principles fairly or consistently. Equal treatment under institutions is not merely a legal concept. It is a psychological and civic foundation for social trust.

During my years in politics, I encountered many different worldviews coexisting uneasily under the same political umbrella. Some disagreements were healthy and necessary. Others reflected fundamentally different understandings of fairness, responsibility, citizenship, and merit.

Increasingly, I have become concerned about the long-term consequences of societies sorting citizens into competing identity categories rather than reinforcing shared civic identity and equal citizenship. Historical injustices were real and deserve acknowledgment, but free societies become fragile when equality itself begins to feel conditional or selectively applied.

Adam Smith understood something many modern debates forget: Stable societies require not only rights and laws, but mutual legitimacy. People must broadly believe the system belongs to everyone.

Without that belief, fragmentation accelerates.

And yet, despite all of this, I remain optimistic.

Canada still possesses extraordinary advantages. We are rich in talent, resources, institutional experience, and human decency. We still produce innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers, tradespeople, farmers, builders, and communities capable of remarkable things when allowed to flourish.

The challenge is not whether Canada lacks potential. The challenge is whether we possess the confidence and institutional maturity to unlock it.

Smith believed commercial societies could elevate human living standards dramatically, but only if moral foundations remained intact. Economic freedom required justice, restraint, trust, and functioning institutions. In many ways, The Theory of Moral Sentiments explained the human foundations necessary for The Wealth of Nations to succeed.

Two hundred and fifty years later, that lesson may matter more than ever.

We are entering an era of artificial intelligence, automation, geopolitical realignment, and profound technological acceleration. The coming decades will reward societies capable of combining innovation with cohesion, productivity with fairness, and freedom with institutional legitimacy.

Canada can absolutely be one of those societies.

But we will not get there through cynicism, performative division, or endless bureaucratic self-protection. We will get there by rediscovering the principles that allow free societies to thrive in the first place: Competence, trust, fairness, responsibility, entrepreneurship, and a shared belief that our institutions exist to help productive people build meaningful lives.

Looking out the train window now, watching farms, factories, rail lines, and communities pass by, it strikes me that the foundations of prosperity are rarely abstract. They are built slowly by ordinary people who trust one another enough to cooperate, build, trade, innovate, and invest in the future together.

Adam Smith understood that 250 years ago.

We would do well to remember it now.