Competitiveness 2

In new UBC research, PPF Fellow Vass Bednar questions policymakers' over-focus in Canada on Apple and Google app stores. 

Canadian Economic Competitiveness

Six months after the release of New North Star II, the case for a mission-driven economic strategy is even more relevant. The pandemic has highlighted the need for a new industrial strategy to cultivate domestic innovations and technologies in Canada's national interests and authors Robert Asselin and Sean Speer revisit their analysis and recommendations and find a compelling model in the US’s DARPA model.

Intangibles are the new basis for competition, and the U.S.-China tech “cold war” is changing assumptions about global commerce and geopolitics. Authors Sean Speer, Robert Asselin and Royce Mendes make the case for a bold policy response to adapt to these geo-economic trends: a challenge-driven industrial strategy that will give Canada a competitive edge as it rebuilds post COVID-19.

Building off of last year’s seminal report on the rise of the intangibles economy, PPF’s newest contribution to Canada’s economic conversation proposes an industrial plan to “rebuild Canada” post COVID-19. New North Star II presents a plan that accounts for the technological push-and-pull of today’s global economy and finds common ground between opposite ends of the political spectrum, in an effort to jump-start Canada's economy.

Rapid and far-reaching changes to the global economy, driven by technology, demographics and geopolitics, are forcing us to rethink some of the core assumptions of what makes a nation competitive or not. Robert Asselin and Sean Speer offer a bi-partisan strategy for what Canada can do in a data-driven 'intangibles' economy.