Productivity Growth: Societal Challenges

societal challenges: As we set out into 2014, we are confronted with a host of complex economic problems we can no longer ignore. And yet, in the face of larger societal challenges the solutions may be especially difficult to see. Debate and vision are suffering in our nations capital. Trust has been eroded. Secrecy and control have become the new normal, at least for now. As other commentators have written, we face the death of evidence: the facts we need to solve our problems are too often ignored or actively obscured, according to The Star. Our productivity growth, too, is weak. Since 2000, Canadas business sector labour productivity averaged a meagre 0.8 per cent growth per year, about half the pace we saw over the 1981-2000 period. Thats particularly worrying when you consider that productivity is a key determinate of living standards and The American educator and philosopher John Dewey once remarked that we only think when we are confronted with a problem. As a great procrastinator, that quote has always resonated with me. As did another Dewey remark: We can have facts without thinking but we cannot have thinking without facts. The Canadian economy is in trouble. GDP growth has been declining since the highs of 2010 4 per cent and now stands at 1.8 per cent. This is weak given the economy is operating well below its capacity. Weak growth makes it difficult to raise our labour market participation and employment rates. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.