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In early April, a couple of guys who once advised Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper, respectively, published one of the better works of popular policy research in some time.

Robert Asselin, the Liberal; Sean Speer, the Conservative; and their publisher, the Ottawa-based Public Policy Forum adopted a narrative conceit that will look odd to undergraduates who happen to find A New North Star: Canadian Competitiveness in an Intangibles Economy on their reading lists this fall.

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The subject will resonate. An economy based on intangibles will speak to college-bound youngsters, as all of them will be gearing up for careers in services, probably in something that involves leveraging software to process data.

What those kids will find incredible is the sight of a “big-L” Liberal and a “big-C” Conservative tackling “big-P” problems — together — out in the open. Teenagers might have heard stories about bipartisanship, but they would have seen very little of it with their own eyes.