The 50 most important people in Canada

Our annual, unapologetically subjective list includes everyone from rappers and corporate predators to chefs and non-profit paragons

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Obsessing over power can feel trivial, even a little decadent. It’s almost too much fun to look at who wields it, and news can make other ways of thinking about our times feel more responsible. This fall, for example, Canadians have been jolted into worrying more about terrorism after the murders of two soldiers serving in their own country. We’ve been troubled by attacks on First Nations women, including 16-year-old Rinelle Harper, who somehow survived to be found on the banks of the Assiniboine River in Winnipeg.
Yet considering who is powerful can be a way of gaining insight into these urgent issues. On this year’s Power List—the second annual compilation by Maclean’s writers and editors of this unapologetically subjective ranking—we highlight the clout of the top Mountie, who will soon be handed new anti-terrorism powers, and two key First Nations leaders, standouts among those striving to leverage the limited power Aboriginal communities possess.
Finding commonalities among these 50 intriguing individuals can be tricky. Our list ranges from household names to: who’s that? Pinnacle corporate predators rub shoulders here with non-profit paragons. To help you understand how we picked them, you’ll see, beside each name, three icons.
There’s no algorithm at work here. Are you annoyed by our choices? Angered by our omissions? We invite you to write in our comments, tweet at us, or join us on Facebook to offer your own powerful case for a different list.
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This symbol indicates our weighting of the individual’s institutional standing. No surprise that the newly named head of Canada’s biggest bank ranks the maximum five. On the other hand, while we detect serious power in the creative clout of a certain movie director, he doesn’t head a studio or produce his own films, so we award him only a single blue pillar icon.
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This tells you how much timing mattered in our choice of a given individual, based on the way things look to us in late 2014. Power expresses itself, after all, through the tasks of the moment. You won’t have to read very far into our list to see that we recognize the pressing priority of the Ebola challenge: Five clocks to a doctor near the centre of the crisis. The same principle works in reverse: Names from sports that made our 2013 list because we were looking ahead to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia have fallen off entirely.
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The power that flows from great ideas is perhaps the most appealing kind. So we enjoy awarding multiple light bulbs to, as you’ll see, a university resident with new notions about linking academia to the community, or a young doc with new ways of thinking about the health of old folks.

Maclean’s 2014 Power List: Canada’s 50 most powerful people

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