Boosting Canada’s Competitiveness by Reforming Business Taxation suggests that only taxing profit disbursements for businesses, which include dividend payments, share buybacks, and bonuses, rather than taxing all business profits, would lead to greater business investment, increasing worker productivity, growth in the economy, and ultimately raise living standards for Canadians.
| By: Alex Whalen, Lawrence Schembri and Joel Emes
Our Incomes Are Falling Behind: Earnings in the Canadian Provinces and U.S. States, 2010-2022 finds that the median employment earnings—wages, salaries and self-employment income—of workers were lower in every Canadian province than in every state in the United States.
The Weakness of Corporate Investment in Canada, 2001-2021: Identification and Assessment finds that business investment in high-tech and innovative asset categories—crucial to raising living standards—has been significantly weaker in Canada than in the U.S. for the past 20 years, and the gap has grown larger since 2014.
A Comparative Analysis of the Economic Performance of Canada and Its OECD Competitors, 2007-2019 finds that over the last business cycle (2007 to 2019), and long before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Canada was already underperforming other advanced countries on important investment, employment and productivity measures that are key to higher living standards.
