#Best of 2023: Maclean’s top Big Ideas

Canada’s leading experts propose radical solutions to the country’s biggest problems

What can be done to mitigate Canada’s raging forest fires? Deal with our gargantuan food-waste problem? More efficiently track UFOs? This year, Maclean’s asked doctors, engineers, politicians, top tech minds and more to tell us their most ingenious ideas for tackling Canada’s trickiest issues and transform the country for the better. Suggestions ranged from updating older solutions, like nuclear power and phage therapy, to helping school-aged kids discern fact from internet-fuelled fiction—and helping adults distinguish AI-generated content from human-made creations. Here, a review of the year’s best and brightest Big Ideas.

Small modular reactors, also known as SMRs, are a third of the size of traditional ones and open a new road to net zero. By David Novog, director of the Institute for Energy Studies and professor of engineering physics at McMaster University

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“Seniors want to continue to live among young people and families—not just play golf or be entertained to death.” By Jen Recknagel, director of innovation and design at the University Health Network’s NORC Innovation Centre in Toronto

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The pandemic—and one very bad winter—have exposed long-standing gaps in Canada’s pharma supply. We can’t get caught off-guard again. By Shoo Lee, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and former pediatrician-in-chief at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto

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We need a way to protect LGBTQ+ Canadians—especially drag performers—from harm. An Ontario traffic law could work. By Kristyn Wong-Tam, a member of provincial parliament and the critic on 2SLGBTQ+ issues for the Ontario New Democratic Party.

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Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are now able to create text, speech, art and video as well as people can. We need to know who made what. By Valérie Pisano, president and CEO of Mila, a non-profit artificial intelligence research institute based in Montreal

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For centuries, Indigenous fire keepers kept forests clear of fuel. It’s time to fight fire with fire once again. By Joe Gilchrist, co-founder of the Interior Salish Fire Keepers Society. He is a member of the Skeetchestn Indian Band in central B.C.

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With the rampant spread of fake news and conspiracy theories, Canadian students would benefit from extra lessons in BS detection. By Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in health law and policy at the University of Alberta.

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In 1917, a Franco-Canadian scientist pioneered a treatment that’s become a powerful weapon against antibiotic-resistant infections. It should be available here. By Greg German, an assistant professor in the department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology at the University of Toronto and a microbiologist at Unity Health Toronto. He is also co-founder of the non-profit Phage Canada.

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Sixty per cent of Canada’s food is thrown out every year. Together, we could drive that number down to zero. By Josh Domingues, founder and CEO of Flashfood.

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Whether you call them UFOs, UAPs or flying saucers, Canada should treat the objects that fly in our skies as scientific phenomena, not pop-cultural quackery. By Chris Rutkowski, a ufologist based in Winnipeg, the founder of Ufology Research and the author of nine books on the subject.

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