Productivity profile of Canada

In Canada productivity-related policy issues and research are covered by a number of organisations, for instance:

• Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development;
• Bank of Canada;
• Statistics Canada;
• C.D. Howe Institute;
• The Centre for the Study of Living Standards.

Statistics Canada: The Canadian Productivity Review (multiple);

Bank of Canada: Allocative Efficiency and the Productivity Slowdown (2021), Overlooking the online world: Does mismeasurement of the digital economy explain the productivity slowdown? (2021), The Productivity Slowdown in Canada: an ICT phenomenon? (2019);

Center for the Study of Living Standards: Firm-level productivity research in Canada: current state and future directions (2022);

C.D. Howe Institute: The Missing Ingredient: Solving Canada’s Shortcomings in Growing Large Firms and Increasing Productivity (2023), Productivity and the Financial Services Sector – How to Achieve New Heights (2019), Entrepreneurial Finance and Economic Growth: A Canadian Overview (2019);

Institute for Research on Public Policy: Global Value Chain Participation and the Productivity of Canadian Manufacturing Firms (2016), Trade and Productivity: Insights from Canadian Firm-Level Data (2015);

International Productivity Monitor: Productivity and Pay in the United States and Canada (2021), Frontier Firms, Productivity Dispersion and Aggregate Productivity Growth in Canada (2019), The Stylized Facts about Slower Productivity Growth in Canada (2019);

Published academic papers: Lagging Productivity: A Threat to Canadian Living Standards (2023), Canadian Productivity Growth: Stuck in the Oil Sands (2023), Canada’s Lagging Productivity: Could the Problem Be Insufficient Competition? (2023), Environmental taxes and productivity: Lessons from Canadian manufacturing (2022), Technological frontier, technical efficiency and the post-2000 productivity slowdown in Canada (2020), Misallocation and aggregate productivity across time and space (2019), The Canadian Productivity Stagnation, 2002-2014 (2019);

OECD: OECD Economic Surveys: Canada (multiple), Economic Policy Reforms 2023: Going for Growth – Canada, Preparing for the Future of Work in Canada (2020), Workforce Innovation to Foster Positive Learning Environments in Canada (2020).

Foster a competitive business environment:

• Accelerate reduction in internal barriers to trade, including through widening the scope and powers of the Canadian Free Trade Agreement.
• Evaluate, with a view to removing, foreign ownership restrictions in network sectors.
• Strengthen instruments in competition law and regulation that prevent the emergence of anti-competitive behavior around large digital enterprises (“ex ante” regulation).

Enhance the allocation of the production factor labour:

• Make tackling barriers around the recognition of qualifications a key element of reform.