The productivity numbers haven't been good lately. The federal government trying to plan productivity could make them even worse

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Tim Sargent of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa and the Centre for International Governance Innovations in Waterloo has a nice new paper out for the University of Calgary School of Public Policy. (We have interlocking think tanks in this country!) It’s called “Productivity growth in Canada: What is going on?” — which is pretty much the policy question of the hour.

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The paper’s own productivity is in making a number of sensible points most economists would agree with. It persuades me, however, as almost everything I read about productivity does, that we should not dive into a national productivity policy.

First point: productivity is important. Over time, what we produce limits what we consume. Either we make what we consume or we use our output to trade with other countries that have things we would like. The very first line of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: “The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes…” So productivity is important.

Second point: It’s hard to measure. The number of hours people work is relatively easy to........

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