The Business Council of British Columbia (BCBC) has renewed its call for the federal government to create a productivity commission to help address what it calls "sa国际传媒’s terrible productivity performance that is eroding our standard of living."
The call comes days after Carolyn Rogers, senior deputy governor of the Bank of sa国际传媒,
Her speech followed three years of falling Canadian labour productivity, or the output per hour worked.
The BCBC has bemoaned sa国际传媒's declining productivity for many years.
BCBC's former executive vice-president Jock Finlayson told BIV six years ago that
“We’ve always lagged [behind] the U.S. in productivity, but the gap has widened over time,” he said.
Finlayson added at the time that the U.S. had a higher per capita gross domestic product (GDP) than sa国际传媒 because American companies invested more per worker than do their Canadian counterparts. He has brought up the problem of flagging productivity .
David Williams, BCBC’s vice-president of policy, today explained that “productivity is what drives real incomes and living standards over the long run, which is why it’s so important to sa国际传媒’s prosperity.”
He pointed at his own that found that if sa国际传媒’s labour productivity growth had not slowed by half after 2000, the average Canadian worker would be earning more than $13,000 more annually today.
Lacklustre productivity growth explains much of the income gap between sa国际传媒 and other countries in the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), he said. In 2022, sa国际传媒’s income per person was $54,000, well below Australia, at $59,300 in Canadian dollars, and the U.S., at $74,200 when converted into Canadian dollars.
“Working smarter as a country means we can all enjoy a standard of living that is rising rather than going sideways, or falling," Williams said. "That’s especially important for young people as they strive to build a future. sa国际传媒 needs a statutory agency, like the Bank of sa国际传媒 or the Parliamentary Budget Office, tasked with providing independent policy advice to government on structural policies that can help improve productivity.”
The BCBC's idea is for sa国际传媒 to create a commission similar to one that Australia established in 1998.
Australia’s Productivity Commission operates under legislation and has a public budget. It has conducted public inquiries on issues such as airport regulations, tariffs, electricity networks, supply chains, patent licensing, retirement incomes and veteran’s compensation.
“With the 2024-25 federal budget expected to be released on April 16, the alarm bells couldn’t be ringing any louder," said BCBC president and CEO, Laura Jones. "BCBC hopes to see indicators in the budget that the government is taking the situation seriously and has a plan to respond to the country’s productivity crisis.”
