6 SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2023
A SUPPLEMENT TO THE FREE PRESS
Canada’s competitiveness needs SERIOUS ATTENTION
and projects will be cancelled and that affects incomes of ordinary Canadians. Canada ranks dead last among advanced economies in growth of incomes per person between now and 2030 and will remain in last place until 2060. Hand in hand with productivity growth is the need to move goods to market – trade is 65% of our national GDP; governments rely on trade’s revenue to fund core public services, such as health care and education. Trade rides on highways and regional roads. However, both provincial and municipal governments are overburdened by “infrastructure deficits” that have built up – that is, infrastructure built in the post- war period is now at the end of its life-cycle, in dire need of repair. The federal government has greater fiscal capacity to partner in funding agreements to get Canada building – and moving -- again. The nation needs a new, federal long-term infrastructure investment program. This should be Canada’s golden era, with rising demand for our commodities – especially, critical minerals and energy – and significant growth predicted in the global middle class, which means booming markets for our goods and services. We have an incredible endowment of energy and other natural resources in this country. And whether it’s low-carbon conventional fuels, emerging energy solutions like hydrogen, or a range of critical minerals, global markets are clamouring for them. Yet the federal government has an almost cavalier attitude to the nation-building opportunities before us, and is seemingly determined to tie up projects in regulatory complexity that slows them down and adds costs. In more cases than not, projects simply don’t proceed at all. The clock is ticking on one of the most important promises in the last federal budget – a commitment to produce “a concrete plan to improve the efficiency of the impact assessment and permitting processes for major projects” by the end of this calendar year. Canadians need to see the federal plan now, back by serious financial commitment, to get nation-building projects off the ground again. More information on Merit Canada’s position on competitiveness can be found here https://merit-canada.ca/ insites/.
Yvette Milner is President of Merit Contractors Association of Manitoba
By Yvette Milner
C anada’s economy rides on productivity – especially its ability to develop our natural wealth and move it to market globally. But regulatory barriers threaten to rob our country of its potential, at a time when the world thirsts for our resources. In the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business analysis, regulatory efficiency is a glaring weak spot for Canada, with permitting and regulatory procedures for even a simple construction project taking much longer and costing much more than elsewhere. Canada ranks 64th on a comparison of efficiency in construction permitting; the US is 24th. It takes, on average, 249 days to obtain permits, licences and clearances to build a warehouse in Canada; the average for similar high-income countries is 152 days. In large development projects, the drag on permitting is measured in years, not days. Canada takes almost 18 years, on average, to get all phases of a mine development through to completion, more than two years longer than a 23-country average and four years longer than in the US, according the S&P Global Market Intelligent Analysis in June, 2023. We all pay a price for regulatory inefficiency and project delays. If a country can’t approve major projects in a timely way, investment dollars will go elsewhere
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