Merriam-Webster defines due diligence as:

The care that a reasonable person exercises to avoid harm to other persons or their property

Research and analysis of a company or organization done in preparation for a business transaction (as a corporate merger or purchase of securities)

Personal due diligence describes the approach we advocate and apply to reversing the harm being done by the disconnect between the employment opportunities being offered by Canadian businesses and institutions today and the way families and individuals are choosing and using higher education to exploit opportunities that don’t exist.

As you do, we have skin in this game. It’s what motivates us to be of service to you.

A community and its businesses work best when its people work. Not only in terms of providing necessary goods and services, but also the tax dollars that pay for the asphalt and the spreaders that keep the roads in good repair, for example, and for—horror of horrors—the politicians and bureaucrats who actually purchase the asphalt and the spreaders. Then there’s the funding of corporate and institutional pension plans so that retirees can draw on them. And for our schools, community colleges and universities.

Being part of a community may mean giving up the right to set our stereo to “deafening” at 2 o’clock in the morning or to driving the wrong way down a one-way street or elbowing our way to the head of the line waiting to be served by a bank teller. But in exchange, we gain access to people and resources without whom and without which we couldn’t live. The visible and not-so-visible people like that bank teller, or the fire service, or subway drivers, or the people who collect and dispose of waste or keep the water flowing or make sure that the lights stay on so that we can read posts like this one.

But we can’t access them if the community isn’t generating enough revenue to pay them to be there. That applies as much to the private sector as it does to the public sector.

The pensions we’ll ultimately draw reflect decisions made 5, 10 or 15 years ago that led members of the community we’ve never met to find or conceive the work they’re doing now. The cycle will repeat itself but the people who’ll become available to do what we’ll need done and produce what we’ll want to buy will be using skills and education we haven’t even thought about yet. The trick and the challenge is and will continue to be to identify what those jobs will demand far enough in advance to allow us to prepare our children to compete successfully for them.

Wittingly or otherwise, Ottawa has created a competitive environment that pits increasing immigration levels against examining the need for a national education strategy. In the short term, Ottawa had no choice but to keep employers in Canada by making it easier for them to acquire the talent and skills they need from abroad. That thinking may be logical and expedient, but it’s also dangerously short-term and it risks abandoning more than one generation.

There are 7 unique PDD people, not just one. Together they represent over 130 years of business and working experience. The fact that every individual’s needs, aspirations and circumstances are unique—yours included—demands it. So do the needs of their families.

PDD wants you and your children to understand and be able to navigate the environment as it exists today and as it will likely exist tomorrow, because it’s the only environment we have. We’ll teach you what information to look for, why, where to find it, how to assess it and what to do about it.

There’s more to PDD than that and we’ll gladly share with you the details of what that is when we meet.