Economy

Many employers in Canada want to get better at hiring and advancing workers with disabilities – but the results are lagging. PPF’s Access Ability leverages policy, research and training to identify ways that businesses and policymakers can ensure workers with disabilities are able to contribute their full potential while fixing the persistence of exclusionary bias in recruitment, hiring and training.

COVID-19 has made it clear that Canada needs a strong domestic manufacturing sector to produce what it needs. Industrial production has been stagnant in the country for two decades and it’s a must for Canada to create and sustain a resilient manufacturing economy that will also be more competitive in a globalized economy and that will create good jobs while minimizing environmental impacts.

Canada’s economy has had its ups and downs, crashes, failures and recessions, but how do you measure the business impact of a country that simply stopped working and intentionally shut down its economy to halt the spread of COVID-19?

Our institutions must build uncertainty into policy-making and program design. This “uncertainty screen” will help ensure a vision of the future that reflects today’s uniquely complex environment.

The pandemic is a financial crisis like none in recent years and governments now face the challenge of promoting economic growth and investment and getting people back to work, while also protecting the vulnerable and addressing ballooning debt and deficits. It’s time to use a scalpel, rather than a sledgehammer, to reduce spending by reconsidering the size and compensation levels in the public sector, reviewing the defined benefit pension programs and restructuring where possible.

No one strikes out to claim the middle ground and yet that may very well be the most prudent strategy for a balanced economic recovery. There is a path for Canada between unnecessary fiscal restraint that stymies growth and excessive large-scale spending.

COVID-19 has been a wake-up call for Canada’s entrepreneurial economy. This paper shows why some entrepreneurs have thrived while others are facing more barriers than ever.

Canada’s relationship has deteriorated since Canada arrested Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou and China retaliated by arresting Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. The Trudeau government has weighed the costs of human rights advocacy from an increasingly repressive China against commercial interest with the world’s second-biggest economy. It’s led to a stalemate of sorts, but there are some actions Canada could take.

As a presidential election looms in the United States, Canada is facing three possible scenarios for its outcome. Trade with the U.S. remains largely as healthy as it was 30 years ago, but that could change as the country’s neighbour to the south looks inward. To combat this, Canada must continue to diversify while also trading south.

Where seasonal work is more common, what kind of EI reform would both protect workers and help create prosperous local labour markets? This paper explores six options focused on Atlantic Canada, arguing that widespread use of EI by seasonal workers makes it seem there's more unemployed workers than is really the case – a distortion that negatively impacts the economic potential of the region.

The COVID-19 crisis has derailed the careers of millions of Canadians. To support them, workforce leaders, and policy and decision makers need to mobilize education and training systems in some key ways – starting with robust labour market information and laying the foundation for a national system of lifelong learning.

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.

Canada must come to grips not just with a massive fiscal shortfall but also consecutive deficits in our current account, a broad measure of our trading and investment relationship with the rest of the world. A government plan must be growth oriented if we are to get the twin deficits under control without resorting to the drastic measures of 25 years ago.

Well-planned, reliable infrastructure is essential to the well-being of all communities. Despite major policy challenges, Indigenous people, companies and governments are closing the infrastructure gap by advancing successful equity infrastructure projects across the country. Canada should follow these examples.