Too many stakeholders have neglected their duty of imagining an aspiring federal capital region for Canada. Under the auspices of the Forum of Federations, a number of persons interested in the fate of Canada’s federal capital region came together to examine the challenges facing the region and to put forward suggestions to deal with them.

In this report on the brainstorming exercise conducted in January 2011, professionals, academics, and elected officials take stock of the vast array of assets on which the federal capital region can build; probe the many sources of failures in coping as...