The central role of the Council of Canadian Academies is to advise the government of Canada on the full range of policies and programs it should embrace so that Canada and Canadians will be better able to face the future as a world leader in both intellectual and commercial enterprise. [...] The universities are the Univer- sity of British Columbia, the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary, the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University, and Dalhousie University. [...] Nicholson became a Senior Vice-President of The Bank of Nova Scotia in Toronto, advising the Chairman of the bank on a broad range of strategic issues, including, in particular, the resolu- tion of the Latin American debt crisis in the late 980s. [...] He was the founding Chair of the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematics; a Governor of the National Research Council; a Director and a member of the Research Council of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research; Chair of the Canadian Institute for Telecommunication Research; and the inaugural Chair of the Members of both the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Millennium Scholarship [...] But I hope to demonstrate the relevance of quantitative literacy to the broader aims of Canadian universities and the research community, as well as to the society they serve.