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CANADA: THE FALLEN GLOBAL GROWTH LEADER
The 1998 OECD study on Canada warned us that we are falling behind, fast. We had the poorest productivity record in the twenty-nine-nation study, and this has been costing us big. As the growth in our output per unit of labour and capital has underperformed the other nations in the study, so has the growth of our per-capita income. A 1999 Statistics Canada study attempted to refute the OECD findings, suggesting that Canadian productivity growth has outpaced the U.S. in the nineties. This statistical controversy is unfortunate. It clouds the real issue-that Canadian living standards are falling relative to the U.S. and relative to most of the nations in the OECD. No one can dispute that nominal GDP per capita in Canada has fallen meaningfully relative to the U.S. since 1980.
If we continue to stand in the way of the global forces of creative destruction-shifting from the old to the new, knowledge-based growth areas of the future-we will fall further and further behind, reducing the economic well being of all our people. Evidence of this is everywhere.
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