An Old Dog Can Learn New Tricks

Think back two years ago….were you using Zoom or Teams to conduct meetings or sales calls on a daily basis?

Canada has always been a poor performer on things such as new technology development, productivity and innovation. We consistently lag behind countries in Europe and the US on this front and tend to invest less in R & D than other nations.

A new thought piece penned by the economists at TD Canada Trust put those two things together…the fact that we trail on productivity and innovation and the pandemic. They noted that we were able to quickly adopt new technology when the pandemic hit – platforms such as Teams or Zoom have become routine for even the most mature among us.

They say that is proof we are capable of embracing technology and innovation…we just need to get on with it. That may require more government investment in basic research while fostering policies that encourage industry to direct more investment towards R & D. And we may need to improve competition, particularly inter-provincial trade, to encourage higher performance levels.