Natural Resources

Productivity Improvements Dept: All those resources can be a fool s game. Pumping and digging and cutting can keep the country comfortable, but they do little to address the country s biggest challenge a sagging competitive position. All those natural resources soak up capital; they usually don t require much innovation or processing, according to Globe and Mail. Canada has one of the worst productivity records in the industrialized world. Upon productivity improvements household incomes depend, not burgeoning household debt. When you ask why median household incomes stagnated for a long time in Canada, and why the lowest-income Canadians have gotten poorer, one reason among many is low productivity and canadians are so damn lucky. We just dig and pump and cut and ship, and we never seem to run out. We just hope commodities prices remain high. The Harper government, possessed of a majority government, seems to have its mind around elements of the long-term challenge. Whether it can persuade the country to confront them is another matter, in part because this government doesn t like visionary politics, and in part because of its relentless partisanship, which waxes so many ears beyond its own supporters. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.