Stephen Staley: Canada has a corporate culture problem

Much ink has been spilled in the past year, rightfully, on the economic challenges facing Canada. Under Trudeau’s less-than-impressive leadership the country struggles to attract capital, both from outside its borders and even from homegrown institutional investors. Mediocre employment data turns downright gloomy when you see the public/private splits in our hiring trends. Our overall GDP limps along on the back of record immigration, while GDP per capita sags under the weight of anaemic productivity. All of this while Canadian consumers struggle to maintain their lives and livelihoods in the face of generational inflation and cost of living crises.

There are many culprits deserving of staring down the business end of a finger pointed their direction. Governments at all levels have erected gates and staffed up gatekeepers to prevent doing, or God-forbid, building anything of economic value. Taxes at all levels are too high, and getting higher, with little of consequence or value to show for all the dollars confiscated. Our aforementioned institutional investors are lured by the siren song of foreign opportunities and don’t keep enough Canadian capital at home.

Multi-variate, economy-wide challenges rarely have a single villain to blame, but in this case, there is at least one party who is insufficiently identified as being responsible for the economic headwinds Canada faces and deserves to shoulder a heavier proportion of the blame than they do today: our corporate “leaders.”