Business
Declining Canadian dollar could stifle productivity growth in Canada
From the Fraser Institute
By Steven Globerman and Lawrence Schembri
The Bank of Canada’s decision last week to lower its policy rate by 50 basis points increases the gap between the U.S. Federal Reserve’s policy rate and the Bank of Canada’s rate to approximately 130 basis points. While this gap might close somewhat if the Federal Reserve lowers its rate at its meeting this week, a substantial U.S. premium will still exist.
Since borrowing rates are tied to policy rates, interest rates in Canada will remain well below those in the U.S. for the foreseeable future. This gap will continue to put downward pressure on the value of the Canadian dollar against the U.S. greenback, as investors favour higher-earning U.S. dollar-denominated assets over Canadian dollar assets. President-elect Trump’s threatened trade actions against Canada could also exert further downward pressure on the loonie, especially if the Bank of Canada responds to Trump’s actions by making additional rate cuts. For context, it took $1.33 Canadian dollars to purchase one U.S. dollar on January 1, 2024, compared to $1.43 Canadian dollars on December 13, 2024. This represents a substantial depreciation in the Canadian dollar’s value of approximately 7.6 per cent over the period.
What effects will a declining Canadian dollar have on the Canadian economy?
In short, it will increase demand for domestic output and labour and put upward pressure on inflation via higher import prices, and it could also lower productivity growth and further hurt living standards.
Why the impact on productivity?
Because Canada imports most of its machinery and equipment (including information and communications technology) from the U.S. and other countries, and investment in this type of physical capital helps drive productivity growth. A declining Canadian dollar makes capital equipment imports more expensive, thereby discouraging investment and slowing productivity growth. A declining Canadian dollar may also shelter domestic firms from foreign competition, which could dampen their incentive to invest in productivity-enhancing assets, even if they price their output in U.S. dollars.
Hence, if the Canadian dollar remains weak against the U.S. dollar and other currencies, it may be more difficult to reverse Canada’s productivity woes. Again, productivity—the amount of GDP per hour of labour the economy produces—is key to improving living standards, which have been on the decline in Canada. From July to September of 2024, the economy grew by 0.3 per cent yet per-person GDP (an indicator of living standards) fell by 0.4 per cent (after adjusting for inflation).
Canada also indirectly imports technology via direct investments made by U.S.-based companies in their Canadian subsidiaries. While a declining Canadian dollar makes it cheaper for U.S. companies to buy assets in Canada, it also reduces the U.S. dollar value of profits earned over time in Canada by American-owned companies. This phenomenon, combined with an unstable Canadian dollar, might discourage inward foreign direct investment and associated technology transfers by increasing the financial uncertainty of such investment.
To be clear, this is not a criticism of the Bank of Canada’s move last week to help lower domestic interest rates given the Bank’s primary mandate to meet its inflation rate target of 2 per cent. Rather, governments—including the Trudeau government—must enact policies to encourage business investment in productivity-enhancing assets.
For starters, policymakers should reduce business tax rates and the tax rate on capital gains, to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. They should also dramatically reduce the regulatory burden and other barriers to entry and growth, especially those faced by small and medium-sized businesses. And the federal and provincial governments should increase competition in the domestic economy by reducing interprovincial trade barriers.
For example, the provinces could adopt a policy of “mutual recognition” so the standards and licencing requirements in one province would be accepted by all provinces. Provinces can also unilaterally eliminate self-imposed trade barriers (as Alberta did in 2019 with grazing permits for livestock). Of course, due to resistance from special interest groups that benefit from internal barriers, such reforms will not be easy. But the economic risks to the Canadian economy—from even the threat of a trade war with the U.S.—could generate support among Canadians for these reforms. Indeed, reducing interprovincial barriers to trade and labour mobility might be the single most important thing that governments in Canada could do to improve productivity.
With Canada’s lower inflation rate, weaker labour market and weaker economic growth outlook compared to the U.S., lower interest rates in Canada seem appropriate. Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem wants to see economic activity pick up to absorb slack in the economy and prevent inflation settling below the bank’s 2 per cent target. Clearly, the Bank should focus on inflation and domestic economic conditions. But policymakers must do their part to create a better environment for investment and innovation, the keys to productivity and increased living standards for Canadians.
Steven Globerman
Senior Fellow and Addington Chair in Measurement, Fraser Institute
Lawrence Schembri
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Later this week the United Nations will hold a vote on a multi-billion climate-change tax targeted squarely at American industry. Without quick and decisive action by the White House, this U.N. tax on fossil fuels will become international law.
This resolution before the International Maritime Organization will impose a carbon tax on cargo and cruise ships that carry $20 trillion of merchandise over international waters. Roughly 80% of the bulkage of world trade is transported by ship.
The resolution is intended to advance the very “net zero” carbon emissions standard that has knee-capped the European economies for years and that American voters have rejected.
This tax is clearly an unnecessary restraint on world trade, thus making all citizens of the world poorer.
It is also an international tax that would be applied to American vessels and, as such, is a dangerous precedent-setting assault on U.S. sovereignty. Since when are American businesses subject to international taxes imposed by the United Nations?
The U.S maritime industry believes the global tax would cost American shippers more than $100 billion over the next seven years if enacted.
Worst of all, if the resolution passes, it will require the retirement of older ships and enable a multi-billion-dollar wealth transfer to China, which has come to dominate shipbuilding in recent years. China STRONGLY supports the tax scheme, even though, ironically, no nation has emitted more pollutants into the atmosphere than they have. Yet WE are getting socked with a tax that indirectly pays for THEIR pollution.
Despite the fact that we pay a disproportionate share of the tax, the U.S. has almost no say on how the revenues are spent. This is the ultimate form of taxation without representation.
Even if the United States chooses not to implement the tax on domestic shipping, it will still be enforced by foreign ports of origin or destination as well as by flag states. As a result, American importers and exporters will be required to pay the tax regardless of domestic policy decisions.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy have jointly stated that America “will not accept any international environmental agreement that unduly or unfairly burdens the United States or our businesses.” They call the financial impact on the U.S. of this global carbon tax “disastrous, with some estimates forecasting global shipping costs increasing as much as 10% or more.”
The U.S. maritime industry complains that although American vessels carry only about 12% of the globally shipped merchandise, U.S. flag vessels would bear almost 20% of this tax. No wonder China and Europe are for it. The EU nations get 17 yes votes to swamp the one no vote out of Washington.
Unfortunately, right now without White House pressure, we could lose this vote because of defections by our allies.
To prevent this tax, the White House should announce a set of retaliation measures. This could include a dollar-for-dollar reduction in U.S. payments to NATO, the U.N., IMF and World Bank.
At a time when financial markets are dealing with trade disputes, the last thing the world — least of all the United States — needs is a United Nations excise tax on trade.
Stephen Moore is co-founder of Unleash Prosperity and a former Trump senior economic advisor.
Ottawa held a full-blown press conference to announce they unclogged a pipe in Toronto and called it a generational housing strategy.
You probably didn’t hear much about it unless you were watching Canadian state media but this morning, the Liberal government held a press conference in Toronto. It was billed as a “generational investment” in housing. That’s the phrase they used. In reality, it was a sewer project.
Gregor Robertson, the former mayor of Vancouver and now the federal minister of housing and infrastructure, stood beside Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and a cluster of Liberal MPs to announce that Ottawa is spending $283 million to upgrade the Black Creek trunk sewer line. That’s a pipe. A very old pipe. And according to Robertson, that investment will “unlock” the construction of up to 63,000 new homes in the Downsview area.
If that sounds suspiciously like taking credit for doing your job, maintaining the basic infrastructure cities rely on, that’s because it is. No one has ever accused the Liberals of missing an opportunity to repackage civic maintenance as a national moral crusade. The sewer line is 65 years old. It overflows during storms. It’s been a known problem for decades. Fixing it is not bold housing policy. It’s plumbing.
But the political optics are irresistible. The Trudeau Liberals, now under the leadership of Mark Carney are desperate for a win on housing. Their record is catastrophic. Home prices have doubled. Rents have soared. Entire generations of Canadians have been priced out of ownership and locked into permanent renter status. And the architects of that disaster are now flying around the country handing out ribbon-cutting ceremonies and calling it reform.
Today’s announcement also included the unveiling of the first project under a brand-new federal housing agency, Build Canada Homes. Never heard of it? That’s because it didn’t exist until a few weeks ago. And who’s running it? None other than Ana Bailão a Liberal operative and former Toronto city councillor who spent years helping make the city unaffordable in the first place. Now she’s being rewarded with a cushy federal appointment, tasked with building modular housing and handing out contracts on public land.
And what exactly is Build Canada Homes building? Today, they’re launching 540 homes. Not 63,000… 540. Factory-built units that will be delivered at some undefined point in the future. That’s the big federal breakthrough. A housing crisis affecting millions of Canadians, and Ottawa’s answer is five hundred and forty modular homes in Downsview.
This is the pattern every time. The government breaks something, calls it a crisis, and then demands credit for fixing a fraction of it with your money. The numbers are staggering. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, Canada needs 3.1 million more homes by 2030 to restore affordability. That means building over 430,000 units per year. Right now, we’re building maybe half that. The backlog gets worse every year. But today, we’re supposed to celebrate because they’re unclogging a sewer and firing up a couple prefab builds on federal land.
No one in the press asked the obvious question: why aren’t private builders constructing the 300,000 units that Toronto has already zoned and approved? Because they can’t. The financing doesn’t work. The cost of materials is too high. Interest rates have crippled developers. And cities like Toronto still impose hundreds of millions of dollars in fees, development charges, and bureaucratic red tape. That’s the real bottleneck. Not the sewer. And here’s what they definitely won’t say out loud: Canada’s housing disaster is not just about supply. It’s about demand, turbocharged by one of the fastest immigration intakes in the Western world. The Bank of Canada has warned repeatedly that immigration targets, set without any link to housing capacity — have blown demand wide open and put relentless upward pressure on rents and home prices.
Mayor Chow admitted it herself, sort of. She said the city has thousands of units ready to build but no takers. And instead of confronting the root causes, monetary policy, taxes, regulatory insanity, the government announces a pilot project and tells you to be grateful. That’s how disconnected they are from reality. They’ve regulated housing out of reach and now they’re posing for photos on a construction site, pretending to be the solution.
And just in case there was any lingering doubt about how deep this failure runs, Statistics Canada released its latest building permit numbers this morning and the trend is exactly what you’d expect in a country where the government makes building homes all but impossible.
The total value of building permits dropped again in August down $139 million to $11.6 billion. Residential permits alone fell 2.4%, driven by steep declines in Ontario and Alberta, the very provinces with the most acute housing needs. Single-family permits fell off a cliff — down more than 10% year-over-year. That’s not a slowdown. That’s a stall.
Meanwhile, British Columbia and Quebec where government intervention is particularly heavy barely managed to offset the damage. The number of new dwellings authorized actually shrank month over month. And this is happening in the middle of a so-called national housing push.
StatsCan didn’t sugarcoat it. They didn’t blame foreign investors or greedy landlords or some phantom market force. They just showed the raw data: Permits are falling. Housing starts are lagging. Builders are retreating.
So let’s just pause here and appreciate the sheer absurdity of what we witnessed. A parade of officials, flanked by branded podiums and tax-funded media handlers, standing in front of a construction site to announce, with straight faces, that they are upgrading a sewer line. And for this, we are told we are “building Canada strong.” Really? That’s the pitch? Fixing basic municipal plumbing is now a nation-building moment?
No! Let’s be clear, you’re not building Canada strong. You’re doing your job. A sewer upgrade in Toronto is not some heroic act of visionary leadership. It’s literally maintenance. It’s what functioning governments are supposed to do, quietly, competently, without a six-camera press choreography and a round of applause from party MPs.
But in Liberal Carney Canada the bar has been lowered so dramatically that simply clearing a permit backlog and patching old infrastructure is treated like a moon landing. They break the system, congratulate themselves for patching one pipe, and expect gratitude.
If you want praise for fixing aging civic infrastructure, something cities used to handle without a national press event, then that tells us everything. It tells us the Liberal government has become so hollow, so addicted to performance politics, that maintenance is now treated as achievement. That’s how far we’ve fallen in just ten years.
They didn’t rebuild a nation. They didn’t launch a housing renaissance. They unclogged a sewer, and are now demanded a standing ovation. And that, in a single image, is modern Liberal Canada: the total collapse of standards, repackaged as progress and sold back to you at full price.
Canadians don’t need more press conferences. They need homes, dignity, and a government that works without constant applause. And if unclogging a pipe is what passes for leadership now — then God help the country.
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