Discussion · Government Orders
Elizabeth May Green
“Canada has a major problem with low economic productivity. Big companies control too much of our telecom, banking, and grocery industries, which hurts competition. We also export too many raw materials instead of finished goods. I want the minister to explain how the government plans to fix this.”
“Mr. Chair, I thank the minister for his very kind comments. I want to turn to a perennial challenge for Canada’s economy and ask where the minister sees his government’s efforts to deal with the productivity crisis going. We are not making any headway since back when David Dodge first declared that we had a crisis in productivity. This is my analysis, and I could be dead wrong on this. Certainly in countries and sectors that are dominated by oligopolies, we have a problem where there is a relatively small number of firms dominating an entire sector. It is pretty well known that Canada’s telecommunications sector, banking sector and the large grocery store chains lack the kind of competitiveness that would lead to better productivity. However, a multifactorial issue for productivity occurs when we export a relatively large proportion as raw material without value added. I wonder if the minister has any thoughts on how Canada can improve productivity or can point to any measures in the existing financial documents of the last year that actually would make a difference in improving our productivity.”
Mr. Chair, I thank the minister for his very kind comments. I want to turn to a perennial challenge for Canada’s economy and ask where the minister sees his government’s efforts to deal with the productivity crisis going. We are not making any headway since back when David Dodge first declared that we had a crisis in productivity. This is my analysis, and I could be dead wrong on this. Certainly in countries and sectors that are dominated by oligopolies, we have a problem where there is a relatively small number of firms dominating an entire sector. It is pretty well known that Canada’s telecommunications sector, banking sector and the large grocery store chains lack the kind of competitiveness that would lead to better productivity. However, a multifactorial issue for productivity occurs when we export a relatively large proportion as raw material without value added. I wonder if the minister has any thoughts on how Canada can improve productivity or can point to any measures in the existing financial documents of the last year that actually would make a difference in improving our productivity.