An OECD study reported in the Globe shows that Canada has dropped out of the top ten in research and development spending and now ranks 12th. While we de-industrialize and fall back on raw resource exports, previously underdeveloped countries -- Taiwan, India and Brazil -- are now outspending us as they industrialize.
We continue to decline in the World Economic Forum's World Competitiveness Index as well. For 2014-2015 we rank 15th.
Even worse, in the category of "innovation and sophistication factors" we rank 25th.
In 1998 our overall rank was sixth.
Canada's dramatic decline in research and development has a continuing negative impact on labour productivity as well. According to OECD figures for the year 2012, we stood at 73 per cent of the U.S. benchmark of 100. This failure to increase labour productivity through investment in new machinery and innovation has had a huge impact on our standard of living and the domestic economy: as wages stagnate and personal debt increases, domestic consumption starts to flatline -- and that further suppresses investment.
So what does Stephen Harper do? He rewards corporate ineptness and irresponsibility by providing one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the 34-nation OECD. It doesn't matter that all this free money just goes into the cash reserves of the country's largest companies (now totalling over $600 billion). Why doesn't it matter? Because Stephen Harper doesn't actually care if they invest in anything. The point of his tax cuts was never to stimulate investment -- it was to jettison government revenue in aid of dismantling the activist state and making it impossible for future governments to act.
The only sector Harper even thinks about is oil and gas. If that seems a bit over the top have a look at the Carol Goar's Toronto Star story on the phantom $200-million fund to stimulate Ontario manufacturing. The money, formally announced a year ago, was slated for something called the Advanced Manufacturing Fund and it was first mentioned in February last year. The goals were laudable, including: "To support transformative technologies and foster collaboration between universities and the private sector."
The problem, says Goar (using information dug up by the NDP's Peggy Nash) is that "To date, not a single project has been approved. Not one dollar has been released. Not one job has been created."
Two-hundred million might sound like a lot of money to promote manufacturing in one province, but the fact is that given Canadian corporations' appalling record of investment in innovation and "sophistication of company operations and strategy," government engagement is absolutely critical. The manufacturing and high tech sectors are in desperate need of the kind of guidance that can only come from a smart industrial strategy. Otherwise Canada faces a continued decline in its value-added sectors and export markets. Ontario has lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs in the last ten years -- that's more than one in four.
If the goal is to create "transformative technologies" (the word green comes to mind) then $200 million is just lunch money. But the Harper government is so opposed to government intervention it can't even bring itself to spend the money it actually allocated.
more
Why Canada's Job Future Is Sinking like a Stone | The Tyee
We continue to decline in the World Economic Forum's World Competitiveness Index as well. For 2014-2015 we rank 15th.
Even worse, in the category of "innovation and sophistication factors" we rank 25th.
In 1998 our overall rank was sixth.
Canada's dramatic decline in research and development has a continuing negative impact on labour productivity as well. According to OECD figures for the year 2012, we stood at 73 per cent of the U.S. benchmark of 100. This failure to increase labour productivity through investment in new machinery and innovation has had a huge impact on our standard of living and the domestic economy: as wages stagnate and personal debt increases, domestic consumption starts to flatline -- and that further suppresses investment.
So what does Stephen Harper do? He rewards corporate ineptness and irresponsibility by providing one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the 34-nation OECD. It doesn't matter that all this free money just goes into the cash reserves of the country's largest companies (now totalling over $600 billion). Why doesn't it matter? Because Stephen Harper doesn't actually care if they invest in anything. The point of his tax cuts was never to stimulate investment -- it was to jettison government revenue in aid of dismantling the activist state and making it impossible for future governments to act.
The only sector Harper even thinks about is oil and gas. If that seems a bit over the top have a look at the Carol Goar's Toronto Star story on the phantom $200-million fund to stimulate Ontario manufacturing. The money, formally announced a year ago, was slated for something called the Advanced Manufacturing Fund and it was first mentioned in February last year. The goals were laudable, including: "To support transformative technologies and foster collaboration between universities and the private sector."
The problem, says Goar (using information dug up by the NDP's Peggy Nash) is that "To date, not a single project has been approved. Not one dollar has been released. Not one job has been created."
Two-hundred million might sound like a lot of money to promote manufacturing in one province, but the fact is that given Canadian corporations' appalling record of investment in innovation and "sophistication of company operations and strategy," government engagement is absolutely critical. The manufacturing and high tech sectors are in desperate need of the kind of guidance that can only come from a smart industrial strategy. Otherwise Canada faces a continued decline in its value-added sectors and export markets. Ontario has lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs in the last ten years -- that's more than one in four.
If the goal is to create "transformative technologies" (the word green comes to mind) then $200 million is just lunch money. But the Harper government is so opposed to government intervention it can't even bring itself to spend the money it actually allocated.
more
Why Canada's Job Future Is Sinking like a Stone | The Tyee
