Productivity

I started a new job and it involves working with a lot of economic researchers.

It's been interesting to see their focus on Canada's weak productivity performance.

We've shown weaker productivity than the Americans for most of the last 40 years.

One of the things I find really interesting though is the need for dialogue with departments like HRSDC that are concerned with the labour market.

There are so many interesting that come up, but that really have to deal more with labour market dynamics and potential impacts on it than my department can handle alone.

The biggest challenge facing the Canadian economy I really think if going to be demographics. It's in some ways the elephant in the room even on an issue like productivity.

It will be quite interesting to see whether this presents a positive shock (in other words business will be forced to invest in capital which will improve productivity) or negative (i.e. lost opportunities because they can't find workers.