At the 8th Annual Ontario Economic Summit, President and CEO of Siemens Canada, Roland Aurich spoke about urban sustainability and four megatrends that shape the future of urban regions: urbanization, climate change, demographic change and globalization. These trends account for the way that business can be conducted in a sustainable way.

Currently 50% of the world’s population resides in urban regions, this number is expected to rise to 75% by 2050. This puts even more stress on infrastructure as well as the production of energy and the consumption of it.

The world’s population is already consuming more resources than it produces. Aurich stated that, “In order to move forward, sustainability needs to be on every party’s agenda.” He went on to say that without an apolitical commitment, the economic development of cities cannot flourish and discussed how cities such as London, Munich and Copenhagen have goals to reduce the effects of climate change by reducing carbon emissions and using renewable energy.

Aurich pointed to Siemens and their three-tiered approach to sustainable development: planet, people and profit.

For Aurich, business should focus on sustainability to ensure the same quality of life for future generations. He emphasizes that being focused on sustainability does not mean a trade off of business profits, stating, “It is THE profitable business [approach]“.

In order for this technology to help ensure sustainable infrastructure development, Aurich suggests that both businesses and political entities will need to engage in a dialogue. This collaboration is crucial and it will maintain the region’s competitiveness on the world stage.

The backbone of this infrastructure is a sustainable approach.

In a speech centred around the upcoming report on public spending to be released by the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak shared his scepticism with delegates at the Ontario Economic Summit that the Liberal party would be willing and able to follow through with the recommendations made by the Commission.

The Commission, led by Don Drummond, former chief economist of TD Bank, has already said that consolidation will be the key to reform in the province.

“I don’t trust that they’ll make the right decisions when the Drummond report comes out,” said Hudak of the provincial Liberal government. “I don’t think they’ll even know where to begin.”

Hudak went on to outline the Provincial Conservatives priorities for the next several years, including over-hauling ‘taxpayer funded’ salaries to more closely match the private sector, fixing the public sector salary arbitration system and a top to bottom review of all government services.

Hudak criticized the current government for, he believes, not creating the right environment for investment in the province. Drawing on traditional Conservative principles, he said the public sector needs to stay out of the way to allow the private sector to innovate.

“The [PC] Caucus is working hard to keep the government on its feet,” said Hudak.

NDP Leader, Andrea Horwath and the Honourable Dalton McGuinty also spoke at the 8th Annual Ontario Economic Summit.

“Great things happen when people with different views and ideas meet,” said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath at the 8th Annual Economic Summit.

Ms. Horwath went on to state that challenges are faced everyday in an ever changing world, and change is a good thing. She insisted the NDP understood that building a better world meant generating wealth and stated her belief that the NDP has shown how to do that in the office.

The first female leader of the NDP discussed her interest in having a broad based conversation on how to improve things in Ontario.

Ms. Horwath outlined how she thought the economic recovery from the 2008 recession has been uneven and unreliable, and that middle income households that were already feeling the squeeze, are now falling behind.

“One out of every four people are worried about losing their job,” she said, going on to state that the province cannot succeed if people are worried about falling behind; people need to look into the future with confidence if the economy is going to grow.

The NDP leader realizes there cannot be growth under a massive debt burden and a balanced approach must be taken. A closer look at the revenues and expenditures and a long term plan is needed to get back on track. Ontario needs to focus resources on areas where it can do the most good and, she believes, the best way to help Ontario is to help Ontario families.

PC Leader Tim Hudak and the Honourable Dalton McGuinty also spoke at the 8th Annual Ontario Economic Summit.

Bernard Kouchner, co-founder and former President of Doctors Without Borders/Médécins, delivered a keynote speech to begin Session I: Innovation in Health Care Delivery at the 8th Annual Ontario Economic Summit.

Dr. Kouchner opened with, “I am not an economist” but went on to state his optimism that the EuroZone crisis would be over soon. He saw the crisis as a chance rather than an obstacle; a political crisis rather than an economic one as countries share a common currency without a common institution.

Dr. Kouchner discussed the similarities between the French and the Canadian health care systems since both countries share the necessity of having public and private sectors, and providing subsidized care. Kouchner proposed his ideal health system, which takes funding out of salaries, as equitable to both the wealthy and poor because everyone would pay the same amount, relatively, and have the same access to the same quality of health care.

Dr. Kouchner also stated that in order to reduce health costs personnel must be cut and then hospitals would have to be closed.

Dr. Kouchner closed his speech by telling the crowd they are “lucky to live in Canada” and that he is lucky to live in France. When one considers that last year eight million people died of avoidable diseases such as pneumonia and polluted water, we are fortunate to not live in these conditions.

He said, “the best example of globalization is health globalization” and that Western countries should broaden their scope to include developing countries and share antiretroviral drugs to help cure common maladies.

Stan Glezer of Sanofi Canada and David West of Mercer (Canada) Limited offered their complimentary but different perspectives during the Matters of Opinion session, entitled, ‘The Role and Place of Prescription Drugs in the Provincial Health Care System’.

Stan Glezer, Vice-President of Medical Affairs at Sanofi Canada, stated that everyone who needs care, gets the best care available in a very timely manner. However, the cost of health care has been growing faster then the GDP for the last thirty-seven years and health care drugs are only 5.7 percent of the budget. Even if the cost of drugs is eliminated, 95% of the problem still exists.

He believes that we are not coming up with a solution because we are not asking the right questions. Mr. Glezer’s solution is to have less people that need health care, and to do this we need a healthier population. Thus, people must self manage their health and understand why they are doing it. He purports that we should not be looking at the health care system for savings, we should be looking for investments.

David West’s main concern surrounded the increasing cost of annually recurrent (biologic specialty) drugs, which is demonstrated through a project that he had worked on in 2009, predicting the costs of insurance for prescription drugs by 2019. He also discussed insurer drug pooling and integrating public and private plans.