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The Canadian economy has delivered solid performance for nearly a decade with increased resilience to economic shocks, demonstrating the benefits of a welldesigned macroeconomic framework and the pay-off from a range of structural reforms implemented since the late 1980s. A relatively weak outturn in 2003 was mainly...
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Canada’s economic performance has remained robust overall, despite a sluggish rebound in 2003 from the earlier global slowdown. The macroeconomic framework established in the 1990s has worked well and places the country in the enviable position of being able to focus its attention primarily on addressing...
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There is a well identified empirical connection between the intensity of competition in product markets and better productivity performance (OECD, 2002a). In general, economy-wide competitive pressures appear to be relatively strong in Canada, with the exception of restrictions on inward foreign direct
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As laid out above, a key economic challenge for Canada is to raise living standards, which in turn depend on both labour productivity and labour utilisation. Product market competition (see Chapter 2) provides a major source of pressure for firms to strive for productivity improvements. Labour productivity increases, the ultimate driver of real income growth...
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Chapter 1 has underlined the fact that demographic forces and rising health care spending could endanger the sustainability of public finances in the long term. In particular, revenue and cost implications of current trends are such that provinces and territories are expected to face severe resource constraints over the foreseeable future on present policy settings. Thus, a key challenge...