Here’s one way to squeeze more productivity out of Canada’s economy. Whoever wins the election should try it
There are lots of reasons why certain types of people may not be cut out for politics, and this particular Toronto Star column might be a proof point. Who would be dumb enough to bring up the Underground Economy during an election, unless you were focused on, say, the Hell’s Angels?
A simple Google search about “Canada’s lagging productivity” generated 895,000 different hits, meaning that each of us might be hard-pressed to offer up a meaningful new suggestion on the topic. But you have to wonder if part of the solution can be found in basic taxpayer compliance? The Canadian economy generates a certain amount of taxable GDP, not all of which is declared.
If captured, those “missed” funds could reduce everyone’s current tax burden, making us more “productive” (i.e., your take home pay goes up without working harder or longer). In the alternative, our current collective effort would automatically generate incremental tax revenue to reinvest in the things that we are otherwise doing without (or borrowing from future generations to fund).
Not your traditional approach to improving a nation’s productivity, but something to chew on.
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As some Canadian voters actively consider piling on yet another helping of the Liberal Party of Canada, perhaps we shouldn’t overlook Samuel Johnson’s assessment that remarriage is “the triumph of hope over experience.”
Given the state of the economy, the cost of living, the housing crisis and crime rates, Conservatives must be wondering if the electorate has been subjected to the neuralyzer device from Hollywood’s Men in Black.
Asked last week whether the Liberal cabinet that he’d been a senior member of had been tough enough on crime, candidate Bill Blair stated, without irony, “Crime has gone up, and people are becoming afraid, and we need to demonstrate to Canadians that we are prepared to respond appropriately to that.”
Blair is absolutely right, and we can at least feel relieved that the Grits have stopped blaming former prime minister Stephen Harper for all that ails us.
Apparently, no one is to blame for Canada’s “lost decade” — other than U.S. President Donald Trump, that is.
One strange, if welcome, development of 2025 is a growing, bipartisan consensus regarding how we should address the fundamental challenges facing our nation: stimulating housing supply, reducing red tape, reverting to more sane bail court rules, and performing emergency surgery on our hemorrhaging immigration system.
Unfortunately, that list addresses only a subset of the recent harm Canada has inflicted on itself, which even MIB’s Agent K couldn’t erase. Whoever prevails on election day, hope cannot be our national gameplan.
As highlighted in this space a few months ago, the United States saw labour productivity grow at more than twice the Canadian rate between 2001 and 2021. While some of our laggardly performance is due to insufficient growth capital, what if we — you and I — were partly responsible for the infamous productivity problem?
Hit the link to read the rest of the piece.
MRM
(this post is an Opinion Piece)