Canada's Latest Report Card: Don't Lose Sight of the Productivity Challenge
Contacts:
Brent Dowdall
Media Relations
613- 526-3090 ext. 448
corpcomm@conferenceboard.ca
www.conferenceboard.ca
Conference Board Report Says Deep Integration Is Economic Solution
Posted on Tuesday, October 28 at 11:43 by sthompsonOTTAWA, ONTARIO, Oct 27, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Editors note: A photo and a video are included with this press release.
The current crisis of confidence in the financial system and the global growth slowdown will pass. The fundamentals of the economy-including productivity growth and the need for foreign direct investment-still matter, and are highlighted in the Conference Board's "Report Card on Canada", released today.
In the Board's latest report card on the economy-which now includes details and analysis- Canada gets a B grade and ranks 11th out of 17 countries.
"The two areas of concern in our report card are Canada's performance on productivity growth and our integration into the globalization process," said Glen Hodgson, Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist. "The good news is that Canada has a strong macro-economic platform, which is helping us to weather the global economic storm better than other advanced countries. We have overcome significant economic challenges in the past 30 years."
However, other fundamentals are not as strong. Canada's C grade on productivity growth is well below that of global leaders like Ireland, Switzerland and Norway-and the gap is growing. This weakness directly contributes to lower income per capita and a $6,400 income gap with the United States.
"To boost our productivity performance, we need a coherent strategy. Rather than being uncoordinated and having various governments and the private sector heading in different directions, we need a nation-wide productivity strategy," said Hodgson.
A poor ranking in foreign direct investment-both inward (investment in Canada) and outward (Canadian investment abroad)-indicates that Canada is not sufficiently integrated into the global economy. From 10 per cent of global FDI stock in the 1980s, Canada slipped to just three per cent in 2006.
Canada's economy had a B grade in the 1970s and 1980s, which fell to a C in the 1990s, before rebounding to a B in recent years.
How Canada Performs: A Report Card on Canada website is athttp://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp.
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Beat me some more! Beat me some more! It hurts sooo good.
These goddamn US Empire Loyalists amongst us will stand by their bootlick Empire loyalties through thick and thin. And when the time arrives, they'll be there to greet them when the US invasion/occupation of Canada comes and, like Vichy in France and Vidkum Quisling in Nazi occupied Norway, and of course Malik in Iraq and Karzai in Khandahar (Yes, just Kandahar.) they will be the "official", and of course "democratic" front men for the foreign occupier.
They are the real enemies amongst us.
Coyote
How about one that doesn't give the resources away...........?
Yes, Rick, and one that involves the "self-sufficient" utilization and secondary processing/development of our own natural resources into the finished products our own people and country need. The key element here being, our need to our dependency on all foreign trading blocs, especially the US Empire, being self-sufficient at meeting our own needs as much as possible, utilizing our own resources and labour, protecting their incomes and needs first, while avoiding the pitfall of "over-development and over-population" and the consequent "resources depletion" that leads to the ambition and need to steal other peoples resources, that is the foundation of imperialism and its wars.
Which doesn't mean that there will still not be any need for some degree of fair and equitable trading relations with other peoples and countries. Of course there will be. It's just that to the maximum degree possible for each national group of the world's people, they should be as self-sufficient as possible, husbanding their land and resources by avoiding over population and development. And yes, that is going to mean population reduction policies in very many places, overcoming the poverty creation policies of religious and political obscurantism. And as part of that, in parts of the world where the environmental destruction has already reached levels of "environment sterility", it MAY no longer be possible for people to live in these hopelessly degraded places. (And I emphasise MAY. In which case the best thing for the land is entirely possibly going to be, just emptying it of human population for a prolonged period.)
But first, before we can even think of getting to there, in my view, we have to deal with this authoritarian, greed driven, never-ending growth economic system of capitalism, such as is championed by this bogus Conference Board of Canada. It is the real Job One.
Trading is excellent for 'peripherals' and doodads, but not for 'strategic' resources and the products wrought therof. We ought to be trading for comfort, but not for survival..........
If the US were to try to take over Canada , they would have the equivalent of an Iraq next door, who's citizens would suddenly have the right to bear arms, and would be largely unrecognizable from their own citizens. It would only take a small handful of Canadian partisans to make the US look like Northern Ireland of the 70's, for centuries if necessary.
How could so many be so gullible as to allow a treasonous prick like Harper become Crime Minister of Canada? Why was this issue given so little time in the opposition election adds of the recent federal eelction ? What does it take to get them motivated ?
Brent