Killing Canada’s Prosperity: The Productivity and Investment Crisis

Canada is quietly losing a war — not on a battlefield, not in the halls of Parliament, but in the offices, labs, and workshops where innovation is supposed to thrive.

While most political debate rages over personalities, foreign threats, or wedge issues, there’s a structural failure draining our future in real time: Canada’s pitiful productivity growth.

And government certainly can take a lot of that blame…

Shockingly, since 2019, Canada’s business sector productivity has grown 0.0% annually (no, that’s not a typo, it has flatlined…), while the U.S. has grown at 1.6% per year over the same period.

During a Pinnacle Digest pod, I spoke with political commentator Spencer Fernando, and one line stuck with me:

“If you were trying to make a country poorer on a per capita basis, you’d do exactly what we’ve done.”

Fernando wasn’t being flippant. He was articulating what many Canadian entrepreneurs, investors, and professionals feel in their gut: This economy is becoming increasingly unproductive — the antithesis of what attracts investment.

From Dream to Nightmare

Imagine a dream Canada:
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• Well-educated population
• World-class resource base
• Safe, stable institutions
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• Access to global markets
• High standard of living

This should be an “autopilot economy.” Even doing nothing — letting the private sector run — should, in theory, produce prosperity.

Instead, we’ve created the opposite.

Today, Canada has:

• The worst productivity growth in the G7
  
• A federal government that’s grown faster than the private sector
• A cultural drift where many aspire to government jobs instead of building businesses (can’t blame them as the public sector now pays more on average than private industry)
• A generation of youth priced out of homes, burdened with taxes, and demoralized by stagnant opportunity

Canada's Economic Struggle

This isn’t about left vs. right. It’s about a structural bias against ambition, risk-taking and free markets.

The entrepreneur who builds a multi-national business isn’t celebrated in Canada… she’s questioned. The investor who allocates capital for growth is taxed more than if he were to do the same in Switzerland. The risk-taker is burdened; the administrator rewarded.

And while the U.S. triumphantly celebrates business success, we often hide it and dilute it with indifference.

The Real Risk Isn’t Trump — It’s Ourselves

Yes, Trump poses a real threat. Tariffs. Trade disruption. The end of “business as usual” in Canada-U.S. relations.

But that’s external chaos. The deeper danger is internal stagnation.

The U.S. is not the reason Canada hasn’t produced a major tech company in over a decade. Trump isn’t why housing eats up 60% of young people’s income in Toronto or Vancouver. And he certainly didn’t freeze Canadian productivity while the U.S. surged ahead by roughly 25% in the past decade.
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We did that.

So What Now?

This coming election matters — but not because of who smiles best on stage or who drops the sharpest one-liner.

It matters because we need a leader who understands this: without productivity growth, and without enticing investment with tax incentives, we are guaranteeing a lower standard of living.

Not overnight. Not dramatically. But slowly. Silently. Like a tree rotting from within.

Whether it’s Poilievre or Carney, Canadians should ask one thing:
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“Who will take the side of the builders — the ones creating value, not managing decline?”

Because that’s who wins this story in the end. The question is whether they stay here… or leave for better pastures.