The analysis in this chapter builds on the Board’s short and long-term economic and social policy work. It reflects our analysis of Canada’s potential economic growth, which depends on labour force growth, investment, and productivity growth over the coming decade.
Document Highlights
Canada’s low population growth and demographic mix will have major effects on the Canada of 2010. Demographics will affect the choices we make for funding education and health. Much of our growth will come from immigration, with most newcomers settling in Canada’s three largest cities.
Canadians’ incomes depend on their productivity and on the value of the goods and services that they produce. Although quality of life is about more than high incomes, we cannot afford the high-quality private or public goods that we want without high incomes.
Canada’s trade performance in the North America of 2010 will be critical to our ability to increase incomes, create new jobs, and reduce unemployment levels.
A defining characteristic of the next decade will be falling unemployment rates. Labour shortages will build and become especially acute by the end of the decade. The unemployment rate will decline steadily, and by 2010, we will reach full employment for the first time in decades.
The fiscal picture of governments in 2010 is very good. Under reasonable assumptions about Canadians’ choices and their governments’ behavior, surpluses or balances will be the order of the day. A return to regular debt-financing at either level of government should not be an option.
Our social policy is now more sustainable, from the perspective of its share of GDP, than at any time in the past 15 years. However, with slow employment growth, the costs per taxpayer are rising. By 2010, they could well reach the same level as in the early 1990s, when taxpayers came together at the polls to demand tax cuts.
There are no reviews yet.