preview

Canada in the Global Economy Essay

Better Essays

Canada in the Global Economy

Over the past few years, Canada's economy has done comparatively well and has demonstrated some resilience to the fluctuating global economy. However, Canada remains to be relatively less competitive with respect to other developed countries. In this paper I will attempt to take a closer look at Canada's position in the global economy today and examine the relevant issues.

Competition is an important driver of innovation and productivity growth. Looking at the domestic Canadian economy, perhaps one of the most significant barriers to a strong domestic economy is the lack of intense competition among domestic firms. There are many reasons for this. First of all, the size of the Canadian …show more content…

This is in part due to the fact that the Canadian economy fails to support the development of domestic giants because of the reasons discussed above. As a result, value-added activities, for example R&D, are not performed in Canada. The branch plant operations simply carry out non-strategic and non-value-added operations that do not give the county any competitive advantages or innovative drives. Furthermore, re-investment is limited in the Canadian operations because the majority of the resources are allocated to build the companies? competitiveness, which is often done elsewhere.

Besides a relatively non-competitive business environment, Canada?s labour force also lacks the competitive mindset. Structural employment remains high, which is partly due to the existence of social assistance and unemployment insurance systems. Work incentives are low under the protection of the employment insurance program, which indirectly contributes in a higher than the desirable unemployment rate. Furthermore, unions and other similar groups do not promote many incentives for workers to stay competitive in the workplace by continuously learning and improving productivity. Countries that have been most successful in cutting unemployment are those that have improved

Get Access