Ottawa: News Conference and Canada

ottawa: The suggestions comprise a first tranche of ideas from the group of external experts who have been enlisted by Finance Minister Bill Morneau to help Ottawa find ways to resuscitate Canada lacklustre economy, according to CTV. The recommendations zeroed in on three areas: productivity-boosting infrastructure, attracting more foreign investment and opening Canada doors wider to a larger number of talented immigrants. "Now is the time where we have to take very bold actions," council chair Dominic Barton, who is global managing director of consulting giant McKinsey & Co., told a news conference in Ottawa. " may not be new, these have been talked about before -- but they haven't been done. The objective, the experts say, is to double Canada projected growth trajectory and add an eye-popping $15,000 to the annual incomes of Canadian households by 2030. And so what we're keen to do is to jolt it." The group called on Ottawa to deliver more than $200 billion worth of infrastructure projects over the next decade using as few taxpayer dollars as possible. The group also called on Ottawa to create an agency with a mandate to increase foreign direct investment into Canada that it believes could triple investment and add $43 billion to the gross domestic product in only a few years. "These actions would bring much-needed coherence to what is currently a disjointed approach to foreign investment," the report said. To get there, the council suggests the government create an independent infrastructure bank designed to seek out private capital by offering investors steady returns through user fees from projects like toll highways, bridges and airports. "Canada should leverage the trillions in institutional capital waiting on the sidelines and focus this investment productively," the council wrote in a report released Thursday. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.