This article is adapted from a speech delivered this week by former Premier Sir John Swan to the annual general meeting of Bermuda’s Emerging Professionals.

These are deeply troubling financial and social times for all of us. Bermudians and residents have felt great anxiety about their jobs, finances and their future. Yes, these challenges are formidable, but they are not insurmountable. Moreover, it is within these challenges that your opportunity to provide leadership and service resides.

Plan for the future because that’s where you are going to spend the rest of your life. The questions you should ask yourselves are: “What can I do to mould and shape the future? Am I willing to be a participant in shaping the future of Bermuda or be an inactive bystander with a laissez faire attitude of what happens, happens?”

To paraphrase Plato: One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics and/or community affairs is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

I would, therefore, suggest that you read two books – “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell and “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In reading these two books, you will realise that not only were their subjects bright, they were smart. In fact they were smarter than they were brighter. Bright people see where they are. Smart people see where they need to go. These books explain the careers of successful people such as Bill Gates who single-handedly transformed the world of technology; physicist Robert Oppenheimer who is known as the Father of the Atomic Bomb; Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela who both brought about significant change to the human condition. Like these individuals, each of you can make a notable contribution to the community and your own profession and open the doors for your own success and the sustained success of the country rather than waiting for something to happen.

It is about the individual making choices. How much do you want to be involved? What type of commitment will you make? Are you prepared to be an agent of change? You have to decide if you want to be a participant by asking yourself the following questions: What are the imperatives that society needs in order to function successfully? What are the ideals and ideas that make a society work? You must decide what strategies are necessary for a sustainable future, be it economic activity, law and order, health care or alternative energy.

Bermuda and most of the world have had the highest level of economic activity for the past 20 years but we are now experiencing a downturn. Here a small country versus a big country. We should be looking at the components as I did as Premier when I put together the Tax Treaty, which took six years to accomplish, but gave us 20 years of unprecedented economic activity.

We have yet to see real economic recovery, and the world’s leaders are sending out confusing signals as to how we ensure a recovery. In some ways Bermuda needs to carve out its own future and determine how to get there. Because of the economic shock around the world, we see the western world putting up economic barriers and taxation, and becoming very insular in their outlook, i.e., they are not embracing world trade, a position we found ourselves in back in the 1980s.

Bermuda’s tourism is virtually dead, and we are at a stage where we only have one pillar to our economy — International Business – and even that is under threat. So, the time for action is now! If we want to reduce the one pillar dependency, then the $60 million question is: “Where are we, and what do we do?” We need to stop the decline and start the economic activity if we want to continue to provide the services to which the community has become accustomed. There are some fundamental decisions to be made which, by the way, are having to be made in many jurisdictions – Greece, Cayman Islands, Portugal and Ireland. Some people in those countries have taken it well and others have strongly resisted. However, it is better we do it before we are told to do it by the regulators, who ultimately define what we need to do. More importantly, it is compelling that we do something now because the one pillar that we have is constantly under threat. If that pillar is demolished, then we would have sat back, done nothing and can only hold ourselves responsible for the consequences.

We need to find a niche that will cause people to want to do business with Bermuda and set up the apparatus to do so. We are complemented with a good infrastructure such as health care, telecommunications, professional services, etc. We must, however, recognise that our limited resources, limited land area and limited population, prevents us from selecting an area that is labour intensive. Therefore, we need to be practical with our thought processes, such as,

4 Extend the boundaries of the City of Hamilton;

4 The development of the City Plan should include the provision to develop high rise apartments, which can be sold to Bermudians and non-Bermudians;

4 The City Plan should have industrial, commercial and residential zoning in Hamilton;

4 Plan a transportation system to shuttle people around the City as do other large cities;

4 High rise development should be encouraged in areas which are not in the eye of the centre core of the Island;

4 Encourage Government to promote wealth management as a good addition to our economy by setting up priorities for high net worth individuals to domicile in Bermuda by providing long term or permanent residency so they can manage their assets from Bermuda;

4 Remove the impediment of people bringing their boats and planes to Bermuda so that they can continue to live in the style to which they are accustomed;

4 Allow domiciled individuals to bring in their key employees;

4 Set up a marina in Hamilton for yachts, parks for activity, which should include a casino and other social activities;

4 Set up a task force to do a thorough investigation as to how commercial activity could be more viable and profitable to the benefit of Bermuda and Bermudians. This should involve looking at the 60/40 rule to see if it is a beneficial policy in this global economy; and

4 Bermudians should be good landlords with buildings of the highest standards catering to both local and international tenants.

In our future redevelopment, we should keep in mind that we need to provide proper marinas as the Waterfront develops. We should also encourage more economic activity to take place, which will create many new jobs for those who are not academically inclined, but can provide services that the public have become accustomed to. A well-defined training programme should be set up so that people placed in these new jobs can be trained if they are convinced the job is available and it fits the perception of what they are. The training will ensure that services are maintained at a high standard. I say this because there are ideals that are unreachable and there are ideas that change constantly but things that come out of these ideas should not offend our ideals.

As a young professional organisation, you should gently start the process by encouraging Government to implement some of your ideas and ideals. If you understand and determine what you want and are smart enough to achieve what you want, then individuals like yourselves, with new ideas and ideals, can help shape Bermuda’s future and, if you are fortunate, the world at large. Realise that your future is tied into your imagination and is relevant to what you can contribute to Bermuda. Therefore, you should take a position that is not political, but is full of ideas, so that you can help the Bermuda public and diminish some of the activities that are happening today. It has been said: “Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is simply passing time. Action with Vision is making a positive difference.”

You need to be pro-active in formulating the future that you hand to the next generation. The educational and job opportunities given to your generation were paved by your parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Now you need to pave the way for future generations that will determine the success of professional Bermudians for the sustainable future.