As the federal government accentuates its focus on major private sector economic investment opportunities and turns its attention to rebuilding Canada’s military, we may be able to staunch the bleeding in our industrial base.
That grim assessment comes from a recent report compiled by the economics team at National Bank of Canada. They chose not to mince their words in characterizing the state of industrial investment in this country calling it an implosion.
Years of excessive regulation and, what they call, a chronic lack of ambition by successive governments to transform our resource-based economy have left us in a weakened state.
The amount of capital flowing into industrial machinery and equipment in the first half of this year was the lowest ever recorded as Canadian industry battens down the hatches.
The situation is so bad, says the bank, that we risk becoming irrelevant in global supply chains, a dangerous position for a country looking to diversity its client base as it moves away from its heavy reliance on American customers.
