For more than 70 years now, the Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs (http://www.couch.ca) has been asking some thought-provoking questions and encouraging lively, stimulating debates and action on a variety of key public policy issues. For example, it was at Couchiching, 56 years ago, that the idea of creating a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was first floated publicly by Escott Reid, a senior official with the Canadian Department of External Affairs. NATO was established a year and a half later, reflecting almost exactly the vision that Reid outlined in his speech at Couchiching.

One such lively debate that is presently going on not only at the Institute but, indeed, in many political and economic circles all over Canada, is the effects that an integrated