Economist-turned-politician: Mark Carney is Canada's hope

The Liberal leader could fix Canada's Achilles heel: productivity

- ROBERT BURGESS

Canada's Liberal Party has won a fourth consecutive national election in a race that largely came down to which party would better stand up to US President Donald Trump. "We are over the shock of American betrayal," Mark Carney, a former central banker and the leader of the Liberal Party, said in a victory speech early Tuesday morning. "But we should never forget the lessons."

Indeed, there were many lessons, not the least of which is that Trump's provocations on tariffs and musings about making Canada the 51st US state probably would have been easier to laugh off if the country's leaders had taken steps to shore up its woeful productivity.

Productivity is Canada's Achilles heel. It is so bad that the 1.8% drop in labour productivity in 2023 was the worst among 38 members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The poor performance, which carried into 2024, erased all productivity growth since 2017.

The Deutsche Bank Trade Weighted Canada Dollar Index, a measure of the nation's economic performance compared with trade partners, has plunged 9.44% over the past four years. A similar measure for the US dollar surged 11%.