Thirty years ago, buying advertising was easy. You purchased an ad in the local newspaper, maybe one in a magazine and on TV and, shazam!, people showed up at your store or auto dealership and bought your stuff. You made money, the media made money and people got the information and product information they needed. When it came to finding a car, a place to live or a job, there was really only one place to go, the classified advertising department of your local newspaper. In those days, people subscribed to newspapers the way they today subscribe to cable. Virtually everybody did it. Enormous, responsive audiences were guaranteed. It was not unusual for newspapers to have a 'read yesterday' rating of 70 per cent or better. The first big shift came when local TV newscasts became so powerful that hundreds of afternoon newspapers across North America moved to morning delivery or died. But the business was still good, so good, in fact, that everybody wanted a piece of it and, even before the Internet, media began to fragment. For many newspapers which over the course of a century or more had enjoyed virtual monopoly status this meant learning to compete and being more responsive to audiences and advertisers. Community relations departments became marketing departments, for instance, as operators learned they had to actually sell their products and value to the community. Some did it well, some did it poorly. But they all continued to do just fine until the green sprouts of the technology age matured almost overnight into the solid oak of the Internet and the single audience and advertising platform that print once represented was blown apart. Breaking news, formerly the sole preserve of print, could now be delivered on demand to people's desktops and Black- Berry smartphones. Heck, you can read it on screens in office tower elevators. Newspapers had two options. One was to adapt to their new role as carriers of commentary, context and analysis of news to distinguish themselves online and the other was to continue to do what they had always done in terms of product creation, assuming that they could just transfer it to the online world. Recognizing that what was most at risk was the lucrative gold mine of classified advertising, papers also launched their own online products to make sure they retrieved at least a portion of the lost, help wanted, rentals and auto advertising. Still, the toll was inescapable. What was once unimaginable is now taking place and, particularly in the U.S., newspapers are dying. For business people who have relied on print to deliver their product information, this is an enormously confusing dilemma. The once simple task of placing an ad and waiting for the phone to ring or the line to form is now a complex weave of picking and choosing between print, broadcast and online deliveries too numerous to mention. But should you abandon print as so many are saying? As a former newspaper executive my answer is: no, I don't think so. Diminished as they are, newspapers can still build audiences bigger than most as a single buy. Readership declines have more or less stabilized over the past eight years and while newsrooms are shadows of their former selves, they are still much larger than those elsewhere. Most of all, while new media has proven to be unstoppable in certain advertising categories, it has yet to prove its effectiveness when it comes to selling retail products. Yes, many newspapers will die. The herd will be culled. The ones that survive will not be those that deliver what is essentially a print version of their online news capacity to people's doorsteps. Quite the opposite: people don't just need news, which can now be delivered on hundreds of different platforms. They need context, meaning and explanation. Newspapers that recognize this evolutionary opportunity and invest in it may never be the bastions of profitability they once were. But under the appropriate structure they can retain and build the audiences they need to survive as solid businesses and serve their communities. It might be the end of the day, but it's way too early to pull the plug on print.

The City of Calgary's Centre City project is one of the most dynamic urban planning documents I've read in a long time. It defines the heart of one of North America's great cities; one of the world's cleanest cities and Canada's emerging centre of economic and cultural influence. It clearly outlines the future infrastructure of a downtown core that is, in its own words, "a livable, caring and thriving place within a first-class urban living environment and a national and global centre of business." Economic, social, cultural and environmental sustainability is a core objective for a plan that in the short run will see 25,000 additional people living in the newly defined city centre, while in the longer term as many as 70,000 people will settle in the area that for many years has been the hole in Calgary's residential doughnut. Last fall, having completed our Toronto the Good project, we at Cardus used the Centre City initiative as the foundation for the beginning of our examination of Calgary's social architecture and how it is expressed through the urban planning process. What we came across was what could be a rather unique omission. Within all of the plan's detailed and admirable initiatives, there is no mention of or accommodation for new institutions of faith. Yes, there are a great many existing faith institutions in the downtown area and some such as the old Wesley United Church have become secular institutions such as the Arata Opera Centre. So we know there is some existing capacity to serve the social and spiritual needs of the population influx the Centre City plan will inspire. But we also know intuitively that existing infrastructure represents a different Calgary than the one that exists today. There are no mosques or temples within the Centre City, which means that while there is some existing Christian and Jewish infrastructure downtown, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and other members of Calgary's multicultural mosaic must travel to the suburbs or fringes of the city to pray and engage with other members of their faith community. If existing capacity is not sufficient to meet their needs, the same will be the case for Christians and Jews. Institutions of faith belong at the centre of cities and not physically and metaphorically on their fringes. These are places of community care and emotional healing. They can and are used for girl guide and boy scout meetings, day cares, seniors centres, AA meetings, choirs, concerts and more. One in three Calgarians attends worship at least once a month and each imam, rabbi, priest and pastor has at his or her fingertips the names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of hundreds if not thousands of good-hearted citizens ready to step up and volunteer in the event of disaster. When all the hotels were full and all those people were stranded at Calgary airport on 9/11, it was the airport chaplain's office that triggered the calls that opened up homes and found people in distress a safe place to stay. Last month, Cardus outlined its plan for a next step in addressing this issue by gathering 50 community stakeholders, including several aldermen (who have been very supportive) at the Ranchmen's Club. Our proposal is to conduct an audit of the Centre City's existing faith infrastructure and report back on its capacity to serve the needs of the additional tens of thousands of Calgarians who will be moving to its core. And, as we work with funders, we will also propose innovations to meet needs that are identified. Current parking bylaws, for instance, make zoning for institutions of faith problematic. In fact, if the current parking bylaw had been in effect during the past and previous centuries there wouldn't be any churches at all in Calgary's core. But that doesn't mean a project as innovative as the Centre City plan couldn't create space, for instance, for churches built right into condominium buildings, or mosques within the plus-15 network or even shared-space venues available for Muslim worship on Fridays, Jewish Sabbath on Saturdays and Christian worship on Sundays. Whether you care about faith or even have one is not the point. The good work that is done by these institutions is vital to sustaining any community's social capital. Centre City may give Calgary a new heart. It's important that it also cares for its soul.

Cardus is announcing a new research initiative to Build Capacity in Canada's Charitable Sector The project aims to stimulate the civic core and strengthen the so-called "third sector", a progressively critical industry in times of economic decline. Browse the research proposal below, or click here to download the PDF.

Cardus warmly congratulates Senior Fellow, and Comment Editor Gideon Strauss on his appointment as the new President of the Center for Public Justice, in Washington. Gideon will continue to serve as Editor and Senior Fellow with Cardus, but from a somewhat greater distance. We congratulate both Gideon and the Center on an excellent new appointment! To read CPJ's news announcement click here.

Not so long ago I was listening to a chat show on the topic of the rights of children seeking the identities of their official sperm donor fathers and vice versa. I was struck by the commentary of one of the participants, who explained why those children have no such rights because the entire notion of affiliation to a biological father belongs to an outdated set of ethics that, blessedly, are no longer accepted or applied. He was correct in that no one has a legal 'right' to know who their father is. Heaven knows paternity is a secret a lot of women have taken to their graves throughout history and a great many men have certainly casually donated sperm, sometimes even while sober, and with it, their fatherhood over the years never to be heard from again. There is no mention of this sort of issue constitutionally so there is no 'right' allotted to people seeking this knowledge. But there is, or at least there was, a generally acknowledged moral standard in society that insisted men take responsibility for their donations, drunk, sober, married, or otherwise. If it no longer exists, and it very well might not, I missed the public debate that concluded the old rule need not apply. I remember my father drilling this apparently passe notion in to me when I was a teenager. Have sex, he said, and the girl will probably get pregnant which means you will then have to quit school, get a job, marry her and regret it for the rest of your something or other life. At the time, there appeared to be no other option because growing up in the 20th Century as I did, there was still this insistence that people should be responsible for their own actions. Nevertheless and accurate or otherwise, my father's words inspired the intended level of terror and had a considerable mitigating impact. I suppose the change began with the "if it feels good, do it" and "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with" philosophy of the 1960s (it is remarkable how much of the political philosophies developed by the young men leading the hippy revolution tended to serve their needs). And then of course there was Murphy Brown, the TV show character played by Candice Bergen who decided she would parent a child on her own as an expression of her rugged feminist independence. Vice-presidential candidate Dan Quayle became somewhat notorious and was generally mocked in mainstream media for criticizing this as an inappropriate role model during the 1992 election. The show's producers were inspired to fight back with a series celebrating the diversity of family structures. Maybe that's when the debate took place because, come to think of it, that's about the time more women began to give up on the idea of finding a husband and fast-forward straight to motherhood thanks to sperm banks. Certainly the banks served the mother's need to become a mother. And I suppose they helped a lot of young men pay their way through college or buy some beer. There is no question either that women who chose to become mothers through artificial insemination are generally wonderful mothers, perhaps even better than most. But they are not fathers. In 2002, Candice Bergen, the actor who played Murphy Brown, said she agreed with Quayle. Bergen called Quayle's notorious talk "a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable," adding that "nobody agreed with that more than I did." In France, a government study on marriage recognized that while adults have freedoms, children have rights and that the government should not "systematically give preference to adult aspirations over respect for [children's] rights." All of this can and no doubt will be debated for decades. But despite all the changes in mores, laws and biotechnology, the most compelling argument in favour of dual obligations of parents to their children comes from children themselves. One of the very first questions each of us asks as we emerge as sentient beings is this: "Mommy. Where did I come from?" And one of the earliest questions asked by children with mothers only is:"Mommy. Why don't I have a daddy?" Those are questions that need to have answers and they need to be the truth.

Senior Fellow Stanley Clarson-Thies publishes "The Faith-Based Initiative: Cause of Contention and the Solution to an Impasse?" in Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Winter 2009 44:1, 70-85 in special issue: "Evangelical-Jewish Relations: Politics, Policy and Theology" with guest editor Nancy Isserman.

The National Post covers research by Deani Van Pelt, member of the research team for the Cardus Education and Culture project, challenging the myth that only traditionally wealthy parents choose private schools. Read the article here .

The Calgary Herald covers new forthcoming research from Cardus in the City of Calgary: Herald link The Centre City Plan, an ambitious vision for a revitalized downtown Calgary approved by city council in 2007, calls for higher-density housing, open spaces to savour and a robust commercial sector. But at least one organization wonders where is the city's soul in all this. Cardus, a public policy think-tank that studies "social architecture," brought together local business, government and faith leaders last week to renew its call for the inclusion of a worship space component in any downtown redevelopment. The group is hoping to raise $100,000 to conduct an inventory of existing downtown church capacity and study the relationship between faith groups and the collective values vital to a compassionate city. "Where else in a city like Calgary do you have places where blue collar meets white collar, where people from all walks of life interact on a regular basis but in churches?" said Michael Van Pelt, Cardus's president. "We need to take a serious look at the role of faith communities and integrate them into our city cores," he added. "It's not just a Calgary question, it's one that many cities are wrestling with." Van Pelt noted churches already play important social roles such as providing seniors care, the welcoming and integration of immigrants and fostering the arts. They also have large networks of volunteers which can be tapped if a natural disaster or civic emergency occurs. The Centre City Plan projects an influx of up to 40,000 more residents to downtown by 2035, one step in addressing urban sprawl. "A lot of people are going to be missing something in their lives if there aren't places to worship in these inner-city neighbourhoods," said Van Pelt. Calgary's downtown is home to the cathedrals of local Roman Catholics and Anglicans. Storied places of worship such as First Baptist, Knox United and Grace Presbyterian churches rub their historic shoulders with construction cranes, corporate towers and upscale condos. Peter Menzies, a senior fellow with Cardus, said with sky-high downtown land values, worship spaces don't need to be traditional, free-standing buildings anymore. They can be housed in multi-use venues where two or three faith groups can share worship space. Menzies noted Calgary's downtown worship sites are almost exclusively Christian, not reflective of the city's increasing religious diversity. "We have to look at ways to make provisions for Muslim or Sikh worshippers in the future downtown core, not just in the suburbs," said Menzies. Ward 12 Ald. Ric McIver said civic and spiritual leaders need to strengthen communication lines. "I like the premise of this study. There's no reason you have to ignore the spiritual component of a downtown core even though we're a big, complex city," said McIver. More information on the Cardus project is available from bharskamp@cardus.ca.

We are living through the biggest financial calamity since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The credit crisis that began in the sub-prime mortgage market in the United States in the summer of 2007 gathered strength for more than 12 months and, by the fall of 2008, had spread to almost every area of global debt markets. More than US$720 billion of bad debt was written off the balance sheets of financial institutions around the world in 2008. Experts today predict that the total write-off of loans across the developed world could reach as much as US$3 trillion. Powerful financial institutions have been humbled and many have either collapsed or had to be rescued by taxpayers. As the conduits of credit were quickly constricted by financial institutions, consumers and businesses both large and small quickly felt the squeeze. The previously rosy prospects for the world's economies deteriorated at astonishing speed, in a matter of weeks, showing just how interconnected the global economy is. This freezing of credit affected every country in the world. The symptoms were obvious: troubled financial institutions, falling real estate prices and slowing consumption and investment. Consider this evidence: in 2008 a staggering US$30.1 trillion in market value was wiped off the global stock markets. Approximately US$7 trillion was taken off the U.S. market alone, the worst drop in the U.S. stock markets since 1937. The response of governments around the world is unprecedented: mammoth bailouts of financial institutions, nationalizing of corporations, aggressive reductions in interest rates and unequalled increases in money supply. The major concern we should have with all this government involvement is the massive budget deficits that have emerged. We should all know that rolling debt from the consumer to the government is not a long-term solution. The last thing we need is bigger and larger governments around the world. How did we get here? What is the root of the problem? In a nutshell we got to this point as a result of three decades of baby boomers, those of us born between 1946 and 1964, living far beyond our means. This privileged generation that began with so much promise is now embroiled in a financial crisis due largely to irresponsible and materialistic lifestyles, most of it purchased on a line of credit. Sure, boomers were assisted by financial institutions willing to lend money without proper underwriting standards. And, yes, the regulatory oversight was exceptionally poor. But in the end, who signed up for all this debt? Who bought the larger and larger homes despite declining family sizes? Who turned over the car leases every 24 to 36 months on cars they could not afford to purchase? Who took the cruises and bought vacation properties based upon future earnings and stock market returns that were unsustainable? Who used the little equity they did have in their homes as a source of funds to buy more and more consumer products of little or no lasting value? One statistic alone drives this point home: in the United States during the past ten years, each $100 growth in total debt was supported by only a $19 growth in GDP (the total value of goods and services produced)! So what next? We need to look this problem straight on and respond by reducing our debt levels and strengthening our own personal balance sheets. The problem is this will be painful for us as individuals and for our economy despite the fact it is the right way forward. By pain, I mean that industrial production will continue to fall, retail sales will be weak, consumer confidence will remain low and the value of our homes will not be going up any time soon. In the end we will be better off when we right-size the economy but, in the interim, we are in for some tough medicine. Advice for investors What does this tough medicine mean for those of us with investments such as mutual funds, pensions and RRSP accounts? Many investors are asking: How do we get asset values to go back up? How do we get out of the grip of this nasty bear market (when the value of stocks is decreasing) and back into the arms of a bull market (when stocks are increasing in value)? The bottom line is we have much work ahead of us before we see a substantive bull market. Bull markets do not materialize out of thin air and they do not have to appear automatically after a downward move in the markets. Powerful bull markets are the result of strong pro-growth economic policies, stable to declining tax rates, minimal government intervention, principled capitalism, vibrant and growing populations, innovations, protection of private property and access to capital from real savings. Prudent investors should be very concerned that many of these important elements of a strong and prosperous economy are not clearly evident. Restoring lost trust and confidence in our institutions also requires something else that is not clearly evident: the moral authority to inculcate in younger generations the necessary virtues such as hard work and delayed gratification. Will the younger generations in our postmodern culture willingly adopt such values when their model generation, the baby boomers, spent most of their lives shirking such values, only recognizing the need for them late in life? Without a strong ethical and moral base (which for Christians is rooted in the truth of God's Word), we will not have the necessary foundation upon which to build a strong and enduring economy for our children. Aging populations Besides the morals and ethics of the people in our economy, the age and productivity of the population are also crucial. Unfortunately, we are also facing an aging crisis as well. In fact, the severe problem of the world's aging population is one of the most significant and misunderstood challenges facing global capital markets over the next two decades. This problem is not restricted to rich western countries. Contrary to the uninformed consensus, countries such as China and India will be the most affected by the economic results of huge drops in the number of children per family. Thus it's a mistake to look to them for our long-term growth. Statistics can help explain the problem. Over the past three decades, the average number of children born per woman has dropped from more than four to fewer than 1.5 on average throughout the largest economies in the world. Given that the sustainable level is 2.1 children per woman, we will soon be losing from 30 to 50 percent of our population with each passing generation. In Europe the average number of children per woman is hovering around 1.3 and in Canada we are currently at 1.7. Philip Longman's book The Empty Cradle (Basic Books, 2004) explains these issues in greater detail. The fact that this change will not cause an absolute drop in the number of people in the world for another 30 years does not mean we can continue to ignore the impact this will begin to have on the world's economy. Russia and Japan are already experiencing more deaths than births and this can be seen in their dismal economic numbers. Over the next 30 years this death spiral will begin to hit country after country within the developed world. Yet many economists refer to the drop in family size as a wonderfully positive trend providing a "demographic dividend." They point to how families with fewer children consume more goods today and can leverage themselves up quite nicely on a double income. Because of the way economists tabulate our GDP, it appears we are better off in the short run if we reduce the number of children per family. The problem is that the baby boomers, products of large families themselves, have not only reduced family size, they have also dramatically increased consumption of goods and services. In short, the demographic dividend has been spent and we have a pile of debt to show for it! Why is this so serious? The global fall in fertility is creating a new world that few individuals, companies or nations are prepared for. We are unprepared because modern economies, including modern welfare states, are basically founded on the assumption of population growth and the human capital it creates. Our global financial system has become capitalized for prosperity and growth alone. It is not prepared for a shrinking working population! Who will service all the debt that has been created, and is now being created, by governments around the world? What price will the boomers' children pay for our assets as the boomers retire? Who will pay for the escalating medical bills? Instead of using credit to pay for winter vacations in Florida or cosmetic surgery, we will need to save up for these expenses the old-fashioned way or forgo them altogether. And what about all those underfunded private and public pension plans around the world after the 2008 financial markets carnage? Let's face it: they will stay underfunded until they renege on many of their current promises and redefine their future obligations in light of the new reality and not the reality that existed 20 years ago. The reality is we are facing years of slowing global GDP growth, higher taxes, increased government intervention and fewer young people who are so integral to a vibrant economy. Discipline and leadership Now that the panic button has been pushed it's time for leaders to take an honest look at the problems. We face unprecedented challenges around the globe as we try to bring stability in the midst of a world swimming in debt and unsustainable promises. All of us need to realize that growth in capital is a long-term process underpinned by discipline, hard work and self-sacrifice. Christians in particular should be part of the solution because we can provide the necessary spiritual anchors in a postmodern culture plagued by short-term thinking. We need true leaders who will balance the needs of this generation with future generations and build a strong economy rooted in such enduring biblical principles as honesty, hard work and generosity. Leadership means standing on fixed principles and never wavering from these principles. We need leaders with character, vision, integrity, courage and understanding. We need leaders with the power to articulate solutions and a strong sense of Providence because they see themselves as part of a higher purpose and meaning that transcends the temporal. If the Christian community cannot step up to the leadership plate, who will? In practical terms this means we are to invest for the future, spending only what we have and avoiding the awful trap of consumerism and materialism even if this means fewer 'things' in the days ahead. We must also be those who remember that God is sovereign. Despite all the challenges we face, Jesus the Christ is on the throne and He is moving history forward to its appointed end.