風蕭蕭_Frank
以文會友
Jake Fuss 宣布發布《聯邦繁榮藍圖》
查看傑克·福斯的圖片鏈接 傑克·福斯
弗雷澤研究所財政研究主任
加拿大目前麵臨著嚴峻的財政和經濟挑戰，因此，我很高興今天宣布發布《聯邦繁榮藍圖》。
在過去一年左右的時間裏，我和我的同事撰寫了20篇文章，提出了一些經過深思熟慮的解決方案，以幫助減稅、降低支出、平衡預算、建造更多住房、解決移民問題、改革醫療保健、修改或廢除碳稅、減少監管、消除內部貿易壁壘以及開放競爭。
通過采納這些政策解決方案，下一屆政府（無論其政治立場如何）都可以改善加拿大人民的繁榮和生活水平。
聯邦繁榮藍圖 Feb 25 2025
Jock Finlayson 和 Lawrence Schembri 係列編輯
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/2025-02/federal-blueprint-for-prosperity.pdf
目錄
重振加拿大繁榮：聯邦政策改革路線圖
Jock Finlayson 和 Lawrence Schembri，聯合編輯
1. 理解加拿大財政和經濟挑戰的本質
Jake Fuss 和 Jason Clemens
第一部分：控製聯邦支出
2. 加拿大在實現北約國防支出目標方麵麵臨的挑戰
Grady Munro 和 Jake Fuss
3. 支出限製的案例：聯邦政府如何平衡預算
Jake Fuss 和 Grady Munro
4.確定通過削減政府支出實現的潛在節支
Jake Fuss 和 Grady Munro
5. 政府人員增長給聯邦財政帶來壓力
Ben Eisen 和 Milagros Palacios
第二部分：減稅與恢複預算平衡
6. 通過聯邦個人所得稅改革促進經濟增長
Jake Fuss 和 Milagros Palacios
7. 加拿大的新財政框架
Jake Fuss 和 Grady Munro
8. 聯邦個人所得稅減免：不列顛哥倫比亞省的經驗教訓
Jake Fuss、Grady Munro 和 Gordon Campbell
9. 通過改革企業稅製提升加拿大競爭力
Trevor Tombe
第三部分：更明智的法規和環境政策
10. 改革聯邦政府的碳稅計劃
Ross Mc Kitrick 和 Elmira Aliakbari
11. 加拿大的碳稅政策已無可挽救
Kenneth P. Green
12. 加拿大實現2026年和2030年溫室氣體減排目標進展評估
Ross Mc Kitrick
13. 渥太華對采掘業的監管衝擊及其對投資的影響
Kenneth P. Green
14. 加拿大的監管負擔過重
Kenneth P. Green ii 聯邦繁榮藍圖
第四部分：住房、移民、醫療保健、新聞業、競爭和貿易方麵的改進
15. 提高住房可負擔性的聯邦改革
Josef Filipowicz 和 Steve Lafleur
16. 指導移民政策的見解
Jock Finlayson 和 Steven Globerman
17. 是時候改革《加拿大健康法》了
Nadeem埃斯梅爾
18. 聯邦政府對新聞業的支持
莉迪亞·米爾揚
19. 加拿大仍需開放競爭
文森特·格洛索
20. 加拿大內部自由貿易日益迫切
史蒂文·格洛伯曼
重振加拿大繁榮：聯邦政策改革路線圖
喬克·芬萊森和勞倫斯·斯肯布裏，聯合編輯
近十年來，加拿大一直麵臨著巨大的財政和經濟挑戰。結果，加拿大人正經曆著負擔能力危機和生活水平停滯不前。這些結果並非特魯多政府在2015年首次當選時向加拿大人民承諾的。現任聯邦政府對經濟采取的積極幹預主義方針，違背了過去20年來取得的成功共識。
由於聯邦政府的規模和影響力大幅擴張，政府失去了對財政的控製——經常性地偏離了自身的財政護欄。它還破壞了加拿大一流的移民政策，導致前所未有的、無計劃的人口增長和住房負擔能力危機。這些錯誤的政策直接導致了商業投資的崩潰，以及勞動生產率和人均GDP增長低迷。如果加拿大要恢複財政和經濟健康，渥太華必須實施根本性的政策改革。
本係列文章旨在為必要的聯邦政策改革提供路線圖，以使加拿大經濟重回正軌，走向更加繁榮和更高的生活水平。本係列的20篇文章探討了加拿大當前麵臨的挑戰，並提出了合理可行的解決方案。在一篇導言概述文章之後，其餘文章分為四個部分，重點關注政府支出、稅收、環境政策和法規，以及包括住房、移民和貿易在內的其他政策。
導言
報告指出，在特魯多政府任期內，聯邦政府支出大幅增加、稅收增加、持續赤字、商業投資暴跌以及人均經濟增長疲軟。由此產生的財政赤字導致聯邦債務飆升，並預示著未來數年債務償還成本將大幅上升。這些錯誤的政策阻礙並擠占了私人投資和經濟活動，導致生產力和收入增長疲軟，加拿大家庭生活水平停滯不前。
盡管加拿大經濟麵臨這些挑戰，但我們有理由保持樂觀，因為克雷蒂安政府在20世紀90年代也麵臨過許多同樣的挑戰。通過采取更為審慎的政府支出、平衡預算、削減債務和具有競爭力的稅率，克雷蒂安政府——很大程度上是馬丁政府和哈珀政府效仿的——為加拿大二十年的繁榮發展鋪平了道路，加拿大的表現普遍優於其他經合組織國家。本係列第一部分的文章重點探討如何以最佳方式限製或削減聯邦政府支出，並實現預算平衡。文章提出了削減八項具體舉措支出的建議，以及取消企業補貼和縮減政府工作人員規模的建議。與此同時，聯邦政府必須製定一項計劃，使加拿大能夠履行其向北約承諾的、占GDP 2% 的國防開支承諾。
第二部分的文章探討了全麵改革以及降低個人所得稅和企業所得稅的方案。降低稅率和簡化稅製將有助於恢複加拿大的稅收競爭力，並促進投資、創新和經濟增長。如果減稅和改革與支出削減和項目改革相結合，則可以在幾年內實現預算平衡，同時實現預算平衡。
第三部分的文章概述了如何減輕加拿大的監管負擔，思考聯邦碳稅的未來，並評估了加拿大當前減排目標的影響。這些文章中提出的改革將提升加拿大的商業競爭力，並促進私營部門的投資、就業和產出，尤其是在關鍵的自然資源領域。
第四部分的文章探討了其他對加拿大長期經濟福祉同樣重要的政策領域的改進，包括住房、新聞業、移民、醫療保健、競爭和貿易。這組文章的主要重點是減少政策驅動的扭曲和障礙，以鼓勵這些領域的競爭和私營部門的更多參與。
這些文章中提出的政策改革為聯邦政府提供了路線圖，使加拿大走上更加繁榮的經濟、良好的就業和所有加拿大人生活水平不斷提高的軌道。
理解加拿大財政和經濟挑戰的本質
傑克·福斯和傑森·克萊門斯
特魯多政府於2015年首次當選，其部分原因在於其新的政府政策方針，該方針承諾通過短期赤字支出（三年內總計251億加元）、降低大多數加拿大人（高收入者除外）的稅收以及更積極的經濟發展方式，為加拿大人帶來更大的繁榮（LPC，2015）。這一新的政策方向與過去20年的共識形成鮮明對比（Clemens和Palacios，2017）。其結果是加拿大財政狀況顯著惡化，經濟停滯，商業投資暴跌。如果加拿大想要恢複財政和經濟健康，渥太華必須實施根本性的政策改革。
政府支出、稅收和債務
特魯多政府大幅增加了支出，用於資助新項目和增加現有項目的資金。聯邦支出（不包括利息成本）從2014-15年度（特魯多政府上任前一年）的2563億美元增至2022-23年度的4482億美元（增幅74.9%）（加拿大，2023a），預計2023-24年度將達到4530億美元（加拿大，2023b）。毫不奇怪，與新冠疫情相關的支出導致了2019-20年度至2021-22年度支出的增長。但在2022-23年度及之後，沒有與新冠疫情相關的支出。
聯邦政府通過增稅和大幅增加借貸來為這些支出增長提供資金。2016年，聯邦政府將對企業家、專業人士和企業主征收的最高個人所得稅稅率從29%提高到33%。因此，目前八個省份的最高個人所得稅率（聯邦和省級）已超過50%（其餘省份僅略低於50%）。到2022年，加拿大的個人所得稅率在38個經合組織國家中排名第五。這對加拿大吸引和留住企業家、投資者、技術專業人士以及企業主的能力構成了嚴峻的競爭挑戰。
以及企業。
特魯多政府在降低中等個人所得稅率的同時，也取消了多項稅收抵免。這兩項政策變化意味著86%的中等收入家庭現在繳納更高的個人所得稅（Palacios等人，2022年）。如果分析中還包括加拿大養老金計劃繳費率的提高，那麽幾乎所有加拿大人現在都要繳納更高的稅款。
特魯多政府還通過借款來為其新的支出提供資金。圖1對比了2016-17年度至2022-23年度特魯多政府原計劃的赤字與實際赤字（不包括新冠相關支出）。由於政府無力控製支出增長，實際借款額每年（2021-22年度除外）都超過原計劃的借款額，而且往往幅度很大。
接連不斷的赤字意味著聯邦債務（以總債務衡量）已膨脹至1.9萬億加元（2022-23年度），預計到2027/28年度將達到2.4萬億加元，這導致利息成本急劇增長。在2014-15年度至2023-24年度期間，利息成本增長了53.2%（經通脹調整後），預計2023-24年度將達到465億加元。利息成本消耗了大量收入，這些收入無法用於政府服務或減稅。簡而言之，特魯多政府的政策變化導致政府支出、稅收和借款大幅增加。不幸的是，這些政策變化並沒有帶來更強勁、更有活力的經濟。
經濟增長乏力，商業投資暴跌
衡量生活水平的最廣泛指標是人均GDP，它計算的是特定年份經濟體生產的所有商品和服務的總價值（經人口調整）。如圖2所示，2016年至2019年（新冠疫情前），人均GDP（經通脹調整後）增長率僅為0.9%。一項研究表明，在加拿大曆史上五個經濟衰退前的時期中，特魯多時期（同樣是2016年至2019年）的經濟增長最為疲軟（Clemens、Palacios和Veldhuis，2021）。另一項研究發現，2013年至2022年，加拿大的人均GDP增長率是自20世紀30年代以來最低的（Cross，2023）。2022年的人均GDP（經通脹調整後）仍未從疫情造成的損失中恢複，基本停滯在2018年的水平（見圖2）。
鑒於現行政策，未來前景不容樂觀。經合組織預測，2020年至2030年以及2030年至2060年，加拿大的人均GDP增長率將在32個發達經濟體中最低（經合組織，2021）。預計到2060年，愛沙尼亞、韓國和新西蘭等國家將超越加拿大，實現更高的生活水平。最近的一項分析顯示，加拿大經濟增長危機的部分原因是商業投資下降，而商業投資對於提高生活水平至關重要，因為它為工人提供工具和技術，以生產更多更高質量的商品和服務。這反過來又能促進創新，提高生產力（Cross，2023）。商業投資下降的原因顯而易見，包括監管壁壘，尤其是與能源和采礦業相關的監管壁壘（Globerman和Emes，2021），以及政府赤字（這意味著未來稅收增加，從而抑製當前的投資）。自2014年以來，加拿大企業投資（經通脹調整後，不包括住宅建築）每年下降1.8%。
根據2023年的一項研究（Hill and Emes，2023），2014年至2021年期間，人均企業投資（經通脹調整後，不包括住宅建築）減少了3,676加元（至14,687加元），而美國則增加了3,418加元（至26,751加元）。換句話說，2014年，加拿大企業在美國每投資1美元，人均企業投資就為79美分。到2021年，這一投資水平已降至人均僅為55美分。此外，外國人在加拿大的投資額有所減少，而加拿大人在國外的投資額則有所增加。 2008年，這兩個水平大致相當——加拿大的外國直接投資（FDI）為657億美元，而加拿大人在國外的投資為846億美元。然而，2015年開始出現顯著變化；到2022年，FDI（646億美元）明顯低於加拿大人在國外的投資（1023億美元）。最後，盡管加拿大的勞動力市場一直展現出強勁的韌性，但勞動力市場數據掩蓋了一些令人擔憂的趨勢。例如，在2020年2月（疫情爆發之時）至2023年6月期間，私營部門的就業創造（淨值）相當疲軟，僅為3.3%，而政府部門的就業增長率則為11.8%（Eisen、Ryan和Palacios，2023年）。換句話說，疫情過後私營部門的複蘇和增長並不像預期那麽強勁。
結論和前進之路
然而，我們有理由保持樂觀，因為加拿大麵臨的許多挑戰都是聯邦政府自身造成的。20世紀90年代，克雷蒂安自由黨麵臨的許多挑戰與我們今天麵臨的挑戰相同（Veldhuis、Clemens和Palacios，2011）。通過將重點轉向更審慎的政府支出、平衡預算、削減債務和具有競爭力的稅率，克雷蒂安自由黨——很大程度上被哈珀保守黨效仿——為加拿大二十年的繁榮奠定了基礎，當時加拿大在經濟增長、創造就業機會和商業投資方麵的表現均優於其他經合組織國家。為了幫助當今的加拿大人實現更大的繁榮，聯邦政府可以向克雷蒂安自由黨和哈珀保守黨學習。本係列的其餘部分將探討一些政策方案，這些方案可以通過修複聯邦財政、提高稅收競爭力和降低經濟壁壘來提高加拿大人的生活水平。這些改革可以通過創造良好的就業機會來幫助建立一個更加繁榮的國家，從而提高加拿大人的收入。
Jake FussDirector of Fiscal Studies at The Fraser Institute
Over the last year or so, my colleagues and I have written 20 essays that provide thoughtful solutions to help reduce taxes, lower spending, balance budgets, build more homes, fix immigration, reform health care, change or scrap the carbon tax, reduce regulations, remove internal trade barriers, and open up competition.
By adopting these policy solutions, the next government (regardless of political stripe) can improve prosperity and living standards for Canadians.
https://lnkd.in/gYsbuavw
Federal Blueprint for Prosperity
Jock Finlayson and Lawrence Schembri Series Editors
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/2025-02/federal-blueprint-for-prosperity.pdf
Table of Contents
Restoring Canadian Prosperity: A Roadmap for Federal Policy Reform
Jock Finlayson and Lawrence Schembri, co-editors
1. Understanding the Nature of Canada’s Fiscal and Economic Challenges
Jake Fuss and Jason Clemens
Section 1: Getting Federal Spending Under Control
2. Canada's Challenge in Meeting NATO’s Defence Spending Target
Grady Munro and Jake Fuss
3. A Case for Spending Restraint: How the Federal Government Can Balance the Budget
Jake Fuss and Grady Munro
4. Identifying Potential Savings From Specific Reductions to Government Spending
Jake Fuss and Grady Munro
5. Growing Government Workforce Puts Pressure on Federal Finances
Ben Eisen and Milagros Palacios
Section 2: Reducing Taxes and Returning to Balanced Budgets
6. Enhancing Economic Growth Through Federal Personal Income Tax Reform
Jake Fuss and Milagros Palacios
7. A New Fiscal Framework for Canada
Jake Fuss and Grady Munro
8. Federal Personal Income Tax Relief: Lessons from British Columbia
Jake Fuss, Grady Munro, and Gordon Campbell
9. Boosting Canada's Competitiveness by Reforming Business Taxation
Trevor Tombe
Section 3: Smarter Regulations and Environmental Policies
10. Reforming the Federal Government's Carbon Tax Plan
Ross Mc Kitrick and Elmira Aliakbari
11. Canada's Carbon Tax Is Beyond Policy Redemption
Kenneth P. Green
12. An Evaluation of Canada's Progress Towards Meeting the 2026 and 2030 GHG Emission Reduction Targets
Ross Mc Kitrick
13. Ottawa's Regulatory Assault on the Extraction Sector and Its Impact on Investment
Kenneth P. Green
14. Canada's Regulatory Overburden
Kenneth P. Green ii Federal Blueprint for Prosperity
Section 4: Improvements to Housing, Immigration, Health Care, Journalism, Competition, and Trade
15. Federal Reforms to Improve Housing Affordability
Josef Filipowicz and Steve Lafleur
16. Insights to Guide Immigration Policy
Jock Finlayson and Steven Globerman
17. Time to Reform the Canada Health Act
Nadeem Esmail
18. Federal Support for Journalism
Lydia Miljan
19. Canada Still Needs to Open Up to Competition
Vincent Geloso
20. The Growing Imperative for Internal Free Trade in Canada
Steven Globerman
Restoring Canadian Prosperity: A Roadmap for Federal Policy Reform
Jock Finlayson and Lawrence Schembri, co-editors
Canada faces enormous fiscal and economic challenges after almost a decade of misguided policy and poor economic performance. As a consequence, Canadians are experiencing an affordability crisis and stagnating living standards. These outcomes are not what the Trudeau government promised Canadians when it was first elected in 2015. The current federal government’s active interventionist approach to the economy went against the successful consensus of the past 20 years.
The government lost control of its finances—regularly missing its own fiscal guardrails—by greatly expanding the size and reach of the federal government. It also undermined Canada’s best-in-class immigration policy, leading to unprecedented and unplanned population growth and a housing affordability crisis. These misguided policies directly contributed to a collapse in business investment, as well as poor labour productivity and GDP per capita growth. If Canada is to restore its fiscal and economic health, Ottawa must enact fundamental policy reforms.
The purpose of this essay series is to offer a roadmap for the federal policy reforms necessary to put the Canadian economy back on track towards greater prosperity and higher living standards. The 20 essays in the series identify the country’s ongoing challenges and advance reasonable and practical solutions. After an introductory overview essay, the remaining essays are grouped into four sections focusing on government spending, taxation, environmental policies and regulation, and other policies including housing, immigration, and trade.
The introductory essay documents the sizable increase in federal government spending, higher taxes, persistent deficits, collapsing business investment and weak per capita growth during the tenure of the Trudeau government. The resulting string of fiscal deficits has caused the federal debt to soar, pointing to significantly higher debt-servicing costs for years to come. These misguided policies have discouraged and crowded out private investment and economic activity, leading to weak productivity and income growth and stagnating living standards for Canadian households.
Despite these challenges facing the Canadian economy, there is reason for optimism, however, since the Chrétien government in the 1990s faced many of the same challenges. By adopting more prudent government spending, balanced budgets, debt reduction and competitive tax rates, the Chrétien government—followed in large measure by the Martin and Harper governments—paved the way for two decades of prosperity as Canada generally outperformed other OECD countries. The essays in Section 1 of this series focus on how best to restrain or reduce federal government spending and move towards a balanced budget. Suggestions are provided to reduce spending on eight specific initiatives, as well as to eliminate business subsidies and scale back the size of the government workforce. At the same time, the federal government will have to enact a plan for Canada to meet its NATO defense-spending commitment of two percent of GDP.
Section 2 essays consider options for comprehensive reforms and reductions to personal income and corporate income taxes. Lowering tax rates and simplifying the tax system would help restore Canadian tax competitiveness and promote investment, innovation, and economic growth. Tax reductions and reforms can be achieved while returning to a balanced budget within a few years if they are accompanied by spending reductions and program reforms.
Essays in Section 3 outline how to reduce Canada’s regulatory burden, consider the future of the federal carbon tax, and assess the implications of Canada’s current emission reduction targets. The reforms suggested in these essays will improve business competitiveness and boost private sector investment, employment and output in Canada, especially in the critical natural resource sector.
Essays in Section 4 examine improvements in other policy areas that are also important to Canada’s long-term economic well-being, including housing, journalism, immigration, health care, competition, and trade. The main focus of this group of essays is on reducing policy-driven distortions and barriers to encourage greater competition and more private sector participation in these sectors.
The policy reforms proposed in these essays provide a roadmap for the federal government to put Canada on a trajectory of greater economic prosperity, good jobs, and rising living standards for all Canadians.
Understanding the Nature of Canada's Fiscal and Economic Challenges
Jake Fuss and Jason Clemens
The Trudeau government was first elected in 2015 based in part on a new approach to government policy, which promised greater prosperity for Canadians based on short-term deficit spending (totaling $25.1 billion over three years), lower taxes for most Canadians (except higher-income earners), and a more active approach to economic development (LPC, 2015). This new policy direction stood in stark contrast to the consensus of the previous 20 years (Clemens and Palacios, 2017). The result has been a marked deterioration in the country’s finances, economic stagnation, and a collapse in business investment. If Canada is to restore its fiscal and economic health, Ottawa must enact fundamental policy reform.
Government spending, taxes, and debt
The Trudeau government has markedly increased spending to finance both new programs and increases in existing programs. Federal spending (excluding interest costs) increased from $256.3 billion in 2014–15 (the year before the Trudeau government took office) to $448.2 billion in 2022–23 (an increase of 74.9 percent) (Canada, 2023a) and a projected $453.0 billion in 2023–24 (Canada, 2023b). Not surprisingly, COVID-related spending contributed to increases in 2019–20 to 2021–22. But in 2022–23 and thereafter, there is no COVID-related spending.
The federal government has used tax increases and large increases in borrowing to finance these spending increases. In 2016, the federal government increased the top personal income tax rate imposed on entrepreneurs, professionals, and business owners from 29 percent to 33 percent. Consequently, the combined top personal income tax rate (federal and provincial) now exceeds 50 percent in eight provinces (with the remaining provinces only slightly below 50 percent) and in 2022 Canada had the fifth highest tax rate out of 38 OECD countries. This represents a serious competitive challenge for Canada’s ability to attract and retain entrepreneurs, investors, skilled professionals, and businesses.
And while the Trudeau government reduced the middle personal income tax rate, it also eliminated several tax credits. The combination of the two policy changes means that 86 percent of middle-income families now pay higher personal income taxes (Palacios et al., 2022). If the analysis also includes increases to the Canada Pension Plan contribution rate, almost all Canadians now pay higher taxes.
The Trudeau government also borrowed to finance its new spending. Figure 1 contrasts the originally planned deficits with the actual deficits incurred by the Trudeau government (excluding COVID-related spending) from 2016–17 to 2022–23. The actual borrowing exceeds the originally planned borrowing every year (except 2021–22), often by significant margins, due to the government’s inability to control spending growth.
The string of deficits means federal debt (measured as gross debt) has ballooned to $1.9 trillion (2022–23) and is projected to reach $2.4 trillion by 2027/28, fueling a dramatic growth in interest costs, which have grown by 53.2 percent (inflation-adjusted) between 2014–15 and 2023–24 and will reach a projected $46.5 billion in 2023–24. Interest costs now consume substantial revenue that is then unavailable for government services or tax reduction. Simply put, Trudeau government policy changes have produced large increases in government spending, taxes, and borrowing. Unfortunately, these policy changes have not resulted in a more robust and vibrant economy.
Weak economic growth and collapsing business investment
The broadest measure of living standards is GDP per person, which calculates the total value of all goods and services produced in the economy in a given year (adjusted by the population). As illustrated in Figure 2, between 2016 and 2019(pre-COVID), growth in per-person GDP (inflation-adjusted) was an anemic 0.9 percent. According to one study, among the last five pre-recession periods in Canadian history, the Trudeau period (again, 2016 to 2019) recorded the weakest economic growth (Clemens, Palacios, and Veldhuis, 2021). Another study found that Canada’s per-person GDP growth from 2013 to 2022 was the weakest on record since the 1930s (Cross, 2023). And per-person GDP in 2022 (inflation-adjusted) had still not recovered from the pandemic losses and was basically stagnant at 2018 levels (see figure 2).
Prospects for the future, given current policies, are not encouraging. The OECD projects that Canada will record the lowest rate of per-person GDP growth among 32 advanced economies from 2020 to 2030 and from 2030 to 2060 (OECD, 2021).Countries such as Estonia, South Korea, and New Zealand are expected to vault past Canada and achieve higher living standards by 2060. According to a recent analysis, Canada’s economic growth crisis is due in part to the decline in business investment, which is critical to increasing living standards because it equips workers with tools and technologies to produce more higherquality goods and services. This, in turn, fuels innovation and improved productivity (Cross, 2023). There are obvious explanations for the decline in business investment including regulatory barriers, particularly related to the energy and mining sectors (Globerman and Emes, 2021), and government deficits, which imply tax increases in the future, dampening investment today. Business investment (inflation-adjusted), excluding residential construction, has declined by 1.8 percent annually since 2014.
According to a 2023 study (Hill and Emes, 2023), between 2014 and 2021, business investment per worker (inflation-adjusted, excluding residential construction) decreased by $3,676 (to $14,687) compared to growth of $3,418 (to $26,751) in the United States. Put differently, in 2014, Canadian businesses invested 79 cents per worker for every dollar invested in the United States. By 2021, that level of investment had declined to just 55 cents per worker. Moreover, the amount of investment in Canada by foreigners has decreased while the amount of investment by Canadians outside of the country has increased. In 2008, the two levels were roughly comparable—$65.7 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) in Canada vs. $84.6 billion in investment by Canadians outside of the country. However, a sizeable change began in 2015; by 2022, the amount of FDI ($64.6 billion) was significantly smaller than the amount of investment by Canadians outside the country ($102.3 billion). Finally, while Canada’s labour market has consistently demonstrated its strength and resilience, the labour market numbers hide some concerning trends. For example, between February 2020 (when the pandemic began) and June 2023, private-sector job creation (net) was fairly weak at 3.3 percent compared to 11.8 percent job growth in the government sector (Eisen, Ryan, and Palacios, 2023). In other words, the recovery and growth in the private sector following the pandemic has not been as strong as expected.
Conclusion: The Path Forward
There is reason for optimism, however, since many of Canada’s challenges are of the federal government’s own making. The Chrétien Liberals in the 1990s faced many of the same challenges that we do today (Veldhuis, Clemens, and Palacios, 2011). By shifting the focus to more prudent government spending, balanced budgets, debt reduction, and competitive tax rates, the Chrétien Liberals—followed in large measure by the Harper Tories—paved the way for two decades of prosperity when Canada outperformed other OECD countries on economic growth, job-creation, and business investment. To help foster greater prosperity for Canadians today, the federal government can learn from the Chrétien Liberals, and the Harper Tories. The rest of this series identifies policy options that can increase living standards for Canadians by repairing federal finances, improving tax competitiveness, and lowering economic barriers. These reforms could help build a more prosperous country through the creation of good jobs which would lead to rising incomes for Canadians.
