SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 311

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 8, 2024 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 311 - May/8/24
Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)
  • May/8/24 4:52:08 p.m.
  • Watch
Mr. Speaker, we do not really have a lot of time in this place to dive into things like productivity. What increases Canada's productivity? Why do we lag in productivity? I have long found a line by Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, pretty compelling. It is, “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything.” I have heard answers to that over the years, and I know I do not have time now to get into the research of why that is. The notion that Canada and our economy is based on hewers of wood and drawers of water makes our productivity quite low. Countries with high productivity have value added in their exports. They do not ship out raw logs, raw bitumen or raw product. They have a lot of value added with worker contributions. As our exports increasingly become low-value, unprocessed resources, productivity falls. However, I do not hear from many of my colleagues in this place, or anyone, decrying that we are shipping out raw bitumen or raw logs. That is what hurts productivity.
189 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border