From the Fraser Institute

By Jock Finlayson

Earlier this year, a senior Bank of Canada official caused a stir by describing Canada’s pattern of declining productivity as an “emergency,” confirming that the issue of productivity is now in the spotlight. That’s encouraging. Boosting productivity is the only way to improve living standards, particularly in the long term. Today, Canada ranks 18th globally on the most common measure of productivity, with our position dropping steadily over the last several years.

Productivity is the amount of gross domestic product (GDP) or “output” the economy produces using a given quantity and mix of “inputs.” Labour is a key input in the production process, and most discussions of productivity focus on labour productivity. Productivity can be estimated for the entire economy or for individual industries.

In 2023, labour productivity in Canada was $63.60 per hour (in 2017 dollars). Industries with above average productivity include mining, oil and gas, pipelines, utilities, most parts of manufacturing, and telecommunications. Those with comparatively low productivity levels include accommodation and food services, construction, retail trade, personal and household services, and much of the government sector. Due to the lack of market-determined prices, it’s difficult to gauge productivity in the government and non-profit sectors. Instead, analysts often estimate productivity in these parts of the economy by valuing the inputs they use, of which labour is the most important one.

Within the private sector, there’s a positive linkage between productivity and employee wages and benefits. The most productive industries (on average) pay their workers more. As noted in a February 2024 RBC Economics report, productivity growth is “essentially the only way that business profits and worker wages can sustainably rise at the same time.”

Since the early 2000s, Canada has been losing ground vis-à-vis the United States and other advanced economies on productivity. By 2022, our labour productivity stood at just 70 per cent of the U.S. benchmark. What does this mean for Canadians?

Chronically lagging productivity acts as a drag on the growth of inflation-adjusted wages and incomes. According to a recent study, after adjusting for differences in the purchasing power of a dollar of income in the two countries, GDP per person (an indicator of incomes and living standards) in Canada was only 72 per cent of the U.S. level in 2022, down from 80 per cent a decade earlier. Our performance has continued to deteriorate since 2022. Mainly because of the widening cross-border productivity gap, GDP per person in the U.S. is now $22,000 higher than in Canada.

Addressing Canada’s “productivity crisis” should be a top priority for policymakers and business leaders. While there’s no short-term fix, the following steps can help to put the country on a better productivity growth path.

• Increase business investment in productive assets and activities. Canada scores poorly compared to peer economies in investment in machinery, equipment, advanced technology products and intellectual property. We also must invest more in trade-enabling infrastructure such as ports, highways and other transportation assets that link Canada with global markets and facilitate the movement of goods and services within the country.
• Overhaul federal and provincial tax policies to strengthen incentives for capital formation, innovation, entrepreneurship and business growth.
• Streamline and reduce the cost and complexity of government regulation affecting all sectors of the economy.
• Foster greater competition in local markets and scale back government monopolies and government-sanctioned oligopolies.
• Eliminate interprovincial barriers to trade, investment and labour mobility to bolster Canada’s common market.

Jock Finlayson

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Robert W Malone MD, MS

US House COVID committee determined that the WHO acted on behalf of the Chinese CCP during the COVID crisis

On December 02, 2024, The US House of Representatives “Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic” released a 500+ page report covering their findings from two years of investigations, which will be read into the congressional record 04 Dec 2024. Malone.News has previously covered and published the corresponding press release.

With this essay, we now turn to an underreported aspect of this report; collusion between the World Health Organization (under the direction of Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus) and the Central Communist Party of China (CCP) to advance the interests of the Chinese CCP at the expense of other WHO member states and global health. Based on these official US Congressional Select Committee findings, WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus must now resign as he has failed to fulfill and comply with both the scope and intent of the UN/WHO charter and also failed to comply with the version of the International Health Regulations guiding the activities of himself and the WHO in the context of the greatest infectious disease public health crisis ever encountered since the formation of the WHO. As the committee clearly documents, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’ and WHO’s corrupt and biased malfeasance and mismanagement directly contributed to exacerbating the severity of the initial phase of the Coronavirus Pandemic.

On the basis of this report, Malone.News calls upon President Elect of the United States Donald Trump to condemn the WHO and Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for their corrupt and biased pro-CCP actions during the Coronavirus Pandemic. We specifically recommend:

• the immediate resignation of WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,
• to prioritize initiating the process of defunding and terminating US relations with the World Health Organization as soon as possible after assuming the office of POTUS,
• to withdraw from negotiations relating to the WHO “Pandemic Treaty,” and to
• to clearly and unambiguously indicate that the amendments to the International Health Regulations recently illegally approved under direction of WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus be declared non-binding, null and void due to a failure of Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to comply with WHO/UN policies and procedures for amending the International Health Regulations.

On 23 May 2017, The World Health Assembly elected Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia as the new Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), during the Assembly’s 70th session. He began a five-year term on 1 July 2017 and succeed Margaret Chan in the role. The WHO has a long, rich, and well-known history of corruption.

Dr. Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun is a Chinese-Canadian physician, who served as the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) from 2006 to 2017. Chan previously served as Director of Health in the Hong Kong Government (1994–2003) and representative of the WHO Director-General for Pandemic Influenza and WHO Assistant Director-General for Communicable Diseases (2003–2006). In 2014, Forbes ranked her as the 30th most powerful woman in the world. In early 2018 she joined the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). She was widely criticized for her handling of the 1997 H5N1 avian influenza outbreak and the 2003 SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, and the 2014-2016 West African Ebola outbreak.

I (Robert Malone) have had direct personal experience with Dr. Chan during the 2014-2016 West African Ebola outbreak, and witnessed her attempts to shake down my small biotech client at the time (New Link Genetics) for financial contributions to the WHO in exchange for supporting the advancement of the Ebola vaccine candidate then owned by New Link (purchased from Public Health Canada for slightly more than 100,000 USD), and which was later licensed to Merck Vaccines (with my assistance). This type of activity is considered standard WHO practice and accounts for at least some of the substantial dark funding that the WHO receives from the pharmaceutical industry and other special interests. Merck subsequently obtained FDA market authorization for the PHAC/New Link Ebola vaccine product after considerable developmental support was provided by US DoD/DTRA and HHS/BARDA. I personally lead the development of and served as primary author of the awarded USG contract bids that capitalized much of this Ebola vaccine support, and also served as initial capture and project manager. A US Army officer and leader of the DoD Ebola vaccine team (not myself) was subsequently appointed project manager for the USG Warp Speed Moderna “vaccine” project.

In contrast, the Ebola vaccine candidates supported and promoted by NIH/NIAID were unsuccessful. US DoD/DTRA was explicitly required by the Obama White House to allow HHS to take credit for that success due to political considerations relating to the involvement of DoD in exploiting vaccine surveillance activities to locate and then assassinate Osama Bin Ladin.

Dr. Tedros’ selection process began before September 2016, and the Assembly considered three nominees: Dr. Tedros, as he is known; David Nabarro (UK); and Sania Nishtar (Pakistan). The 70th WHA convened from 22-31 May 2017, in Geneva, Switzerland, and selected Dr. Tedros as Director-General WHO with the strong support of Mr. Bill Gates.

Previously, Tedros served as Chair of the Global Fund and of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership Board (RBM) and created the Global Malaria Action Plan, which expanded the RBM’s work beyond Africa to Asia and Latin America. He also served as Ethiopia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Health (2012-2016 ). Tedros has links to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (“TPLF”), a group designated as a terrorist organization by the Ethiopian government. Tedros was a senior capo for TPLF, a gangster mafia that ruled Ethiopia from 1991-2018. During that time, he served as Health Minister and Foreign Minister, cementing his credentials as a member of the inner circle of what was one of if not the most corrupt, brutal and genocidal regimes to set foot on this planet in the past 30 years. Tedros’ political career began by aligning with TPLF, a hard-left organization. He served as Ethiopia’s health minister and foreign minister under the TPLF-dominated ruling coalition. The Ethiopian government has turned against Tedros, accusing him of supporting TPLF and failing to show integrity and professionalism. In 2020, Ethiopia’s military accused Tedros Adhanom of supporting and trying to procure arms and diplomatic support for TPLF, which is fighting federal troops. The Ethiopian government has called on WHO to investigate Tedros’ actions and declined to back his re-election as WHO’s Director-General in May 2022.

The 75th meeting of the World Health Assembly reelected Dr. Tedros as WHO head (unopposed) by unanimous acclimation for a second term beginning 16 August 2022. No nation put up a candidate against him despite his controversial handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and close relationship to China (CCP).

When the Biden administration rejoined the WHO in January after President Trump had elected to withdraw from the WHO, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that Tedros was his “dear friend.” Tedros reportedly referred to Fauci as “my brother Tony.”

As reported at the time by Fox News

Craig Singleton, adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told Fox News, “The WHO Director General election stood as one of the first multilateral tests for the Biden administration, which has prioritized multilateralism and the United Nations in particular as a vehicle to promote U.S. interests on the world stage. The administration has put forward candidates for other international organization elections, such as the International Telecommunications Union, but has yet to provide an explanation for its decision to not challenge Tedros.”

Singleton continued, “This misstep raises serious questions about Washington’s efforts to push back against China’s growing U.N. activism, which includes Beijing’s efforts to promote leadership candidates throughout the UN system which are deferential to China’s interests.”

Observers say the U.S. lack of activism in the election process means it lost a major opportunity to wield influence over the future of the organization. The nomination deadline ended at the end of September.

This unfortunate history provides yet another example of the Biden/Harris administration’s actions that functionally supported Chinese CCP activities and agendas.

Dr. Tedros recently jammed through modifications of the International Health Regulations during the 77th meeting of the World Health Assembly without official US governmental objections while blatantly disregarding established protocol and process for legal amendment approvals, which Malone.News previously covered here.

The 78th meeting of the World Health Assembly is scheduled to convene in Geneva from Monday, May 19, 2025 to Tuesday, May 27, 2025, and approval of the proposed WHO/International “Pandemic Treaty” is anticipated during that meeting.

The following is a summary of the findings of the US House COVID committee findings regarding Tedros, WHO, and the proposed Pandemic Treaty. For detailed supporting text, please see the report section titled “The Implementation or Effectiveness of Any Federal Law or Regulation Applied, Enacted, or Under Consideration to Address the Coronavirus Pandemic and Prepare for Future Pandemics”, subsection “I. Overreliance on the World Health Organization,” pages 171 to 188.

Key findings from this section of the report include:

1. The World Health Organization Failed to Uphold Its Mission and Caved to Chinese Communist Party Pressure.
   1. The WHO Ignored Taiwan Despite It Warning of COVID-19 in December 2019
   2. The WHO Denied Human-to-Human Spread of COVID-19 Based Solely on CCP Propaganda
   3. The WHO Prolonged Naming COVID-19 a PHEIC and Pandemic Because the CCP Insisted the Spread was Under Control
   4. The WHO Delayed and Denigrated Serious Countermeasures, Like Travel Restrictions, Because of CCP Pressure
   5. The WHO Continued to Praise CCP Failed Efforts to Combat the Pandemic, Despite a Globally Recognized the Cover-Up
   6. The WHO Failed to Condemn the CCP’s Aggressive Tactics Against Whistleblowers, Journalists, and Americans
   7. The WHO Posted False Information Regarding the Origins and Notification of COVID- 19’s Emergence
2. The Chinese Communist Party Violated Articles Six and Seven of the International Health Regulations with No Repercussions.
   1. The CCP violated IHR Articles Six and Seven and needs to be held accountable.
   2. Article 6 of the IHR says that “[e]ach State Party shall notify WHO…within 24 hours…of all events which may constitute a public health emergency of international concern.”666 In order for an outbreak to require notification it must: (1) have serious public health consequences, (2) be unusual or unexpected, (3) have risk of international spread, and (4) pose significant risk to international trade.667 COVID-19 met all these criteria well before the WHO was formally notified of the outbreak by China. Further, Article 7 of the IHR states that if a “State Party has evidence of an unexpected or unusual public health event…it shall provide to WHO all relevant public health information.”668 The CCP failed to notify the WHO in a timely manner and subsequently concealed valuable information—harming the global response and leading to unnecessary illness and death.
3. The World Health Organization’s Report Regarding the Origins of COVID-19 Was Incomplete, Misleading, and Parroted Chinese Communist Party Propaganda.
   1. Apart from the initial mismanagement of the virus, the WHO produced a report on the origins of COVID-19 that did nothing but continue the CCP’s propaganda.675 The WHO attempted to organize an investigation into the origins of the virus, yet from the very beginning it was evident the CCP was completely in control.
   2. The “Terms of Reference for the China Part” [hereinafter “Terms of Reference”] was a document that laid the ground rules for the WHO’s investigation. These terms were inherently flawed, provided significant discretion to the CCP, and continued to parrot CCP propaganda.676 Some examples included:
      1. Supporting CCP propaganda by stating the investigation would also evaluate the “possibility the virus may have silently” started outside of Wuhan.
      2. Dodging responsibility by “build[ing] on existing information and augment, rather than duplicate, ongoing [CCP]…efforts.”
      3. Phony scientific independence by giving the CCP final right of refusal on the “composition of the international team.”
   3. In January 2021, an international team traveled to Wuhan, China to review evidence of when and how the virus might have emerged.678 In March 2021, the WHO team released a report, entitled “WHO-Convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part,” [hereinafter “WHO Report”] outlining four possible origin scenarios:
      1. direct zoonotic spillover is considered to be a possible-to-likely pathway;
      2. introduction through an intermediate host is considered to be a likely to very likely pathway;
      3. introduction through cold/food chain products is considered a possible pathway; [and]
      4. introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway.
   4. A significant restriction, was the CCP’s complete control over every single aspect of the investigation team’s itinerary and access to information. Upon arriving in Wuhan, the WHO team quarantined for two weeks in hotel rooms and were further restricted to certain areas of the hotel after quarantining.
   5. The investigators were restricted from dining with their Chinese counterparts, a seemingly insignificant detail, yet denied the WHO team the opportunity to engage in informal, human-to-human, conversation that can provide invaluable information.
   6. In Wuhan, Chinese scientists stated they had reviewed the medical records of approximately 76,000 patients from more than 200 medical institutions.692 When the WHO team requested raw numbers and data, Chinese scientists only presented analysis.
   7. Of the 76,000 medical records examined, 92 patients from October, November, and early December 2019 curiously showed symptoms suggesting COVID-19, yet none tested positive for antibodies according to medical records.
   8. The WHO Report’s conclusion included four hypotheses: that the virus jumped directly from animal to human; it spread via some (one not identified) intermediate animal; it was transmitted via the food chain, especially frozen products; or it came from a laboratory. These were concluded via a show of hands, in a room with Chinese counterparts—many of whom report directly to the CCP—that had already ruled out a lab accident and suggested the pandemic started somewhere outside of China. The theory that the virus came from a lab was voted as “extremely unlikely” and wasn’t recommended for further research.
   9. This was very clearly not a thorough, complete, or impartial investigation. The CCP Ministry of Foreign Affairs even admitted, “China firmly opposes certain countries’ attempts to…hold China accountable.” Yet, even though the rest of the world understands this report is a sham, the CCP presents it as the definitive assessment concerning the origins of COVID-19. So much so, the Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. sent the Select Subcommittee a letter attempting to obstruct the Select Subcommittee’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19, citing to the WHO origins report.
4. The WHO team was not allowed to review any raw data or conduct their own analysis.

    

Malone News previously covered the original WHO COVID investigation findings here.

The original WHO report key findings included the following, which are contradicted by the House Select subcommittee’s findings. This quote clearly demonstrates that the WHO was compromised by placing the interests of the Chinese CCP above those of other member states and global health.

“For each of these possible pathways of emergence, the joint team conducted a qualitative risk assessment, considering the available scientific evidence and findings. It also stated the arguments against each possibility. The team assessed the relative likelihood of these pathways and prioritized further studies that would potentially increase knowledge and understanding globally.  The joint team’s assessment of likelihood of each possible pathway was as follows:

• direct zoonotic spillover is considered to be a possible-to-likely pathway;

• introduction through an intermediate host is considered to be a likely to very likely pathway;

• introduction through cold/ food chain products is considered a possible pathway;

• introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway.”

The full 2021 WHO report can be downloaded from this link.