A decade ago, Toronto business economist Nuala Beck freshened economic thinking with the phrase “new economy,” the idea that businesses built on human capital would thrive more than those in the old economy of bricks and mortar. In The Next Century, Beck continues with her theme that human capital and those who have it will outrun people, companies, and countries that have their capital tied up in smelters and woodmills.

It is no small undertaking to prove that Canada’s economy, heavily invested in mines and forests, is going to overwhelm the world with its knowledge-based industries. Beck nevertheless insists Canada will pull ahead of much of the rest of the world because it has 32.8 knowledge workers per 100 employees, a higher ratio than Japan. As well, she notes that Canadians speak English, the world’s main language of business, and have an economy low in corruption (those fleeced in the Bre-X scandal and on numerous Vancouver Stock Exchange deals would disagree). Beck does not deal with the effects of Canada’s high tax regime on entrepreneurship. Sadly, many of the brightest graduates of our best technology programs are taxed into flight to the U.S.

A major change Beck would like is for markets to facilitate direct investment in ideas, rather than in the companies whose products embody ideas. The distinction is rhetorical, however, for many start-up firms in high technology are nothing more than ideas with a little leased office furniture. Like the assertion that Canada has more knowledge workers than Japan, based on a definition that includes lawyers as knowledge workers (they have knowledge, but mostly squabble about who gets what), the proof is based in rhetoric more than economics.

This book is a few hundred pages of pep rally for corporate managers and meeting arrangers who may employ Beck’s thoughts and hire her to make lunch time speeches. For proof that Canada will soar in the next century, we’ll need more data than Beck provides.