Canada should measure productivity in government |
Kevin Lynch is the former clerk of the Privy Council and deputy minister of finance.
Jim Mitchell was a senior executive in the Privy Council Office and Treasury Board.
It was the Bank of Canada that moved productivity from the footnotes to the headlines in 2024 when it declared that Canada was in a productivity crisis.
In a similar vein, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s mandate letter to his new cabinet positioned our weak productivity as one of the “generational challenges” facing Canada that his government intended to address.
And Mario Draghi, the well-known former European central banker, nailed the political economy of weak productivity, warning European leaders in 2024 that unless it was resolutely dealt with, Europe “will inexorably become less prosperous, less equal, less secure and, as a result, less free to choose our future.” He could have been talking about Canada in the era of Donald Trump.
Canada stuck in ‘vicious circle’ of low productivity, Bank of Canada says
Canada’s productivity performance has been........