As Canada continues to experience sluggish growth, MLI Munk Senior Fellow Philip Cross joined The Real Economy on BNN Bloomberg to discuss Canada’s role in the rapidly changing global economy.
With US competitiveness greatly exceeding Canadian competitiveness, Cross notes that this is hardly a new issue for Canada. However, “what’s different is that it seems to be getting worse,” says Cross.
According to Cross, Canada’s comparatively weak competitiveness is causing decreased business investment, both within Canada and from abroad.
“[Business investment is] trending in the wrong direction at this moment. The government should be concerned by that.”
To fix this, Cross suggests that the government needs to take the concerns of the business community seriously and regain the confidence of investors.
“It’s not just a matter of tax reform, or corporate taxes, or regulation, or infrastructure approval,” but that the government needs to get enough of these files right to “send a signal to the business community that we’re sensitive to [their] concerns.”
“In fact, the very opposite seems to be happening.”
