On April 12, 33 prominent Canadian business leaders, most of them active or retired CEOs, published an open letter in several newspapers endorsing Pierre Poilievre’s bid to become the next prime minister of Canada.
So, here we are, fresh from Mark Carney’s Monday victory in staying on as PM, and the business leaders must be disappointed.
But they shouldn’t be, because Carney has promised to do most of what they called for in their ad, headlined “Friends of Free Enterprise in Canada: Time for a Change.”
The ad was unusual. Business leaders tend to keep their distance from the rough and tumble of partisan politics. So, the 33 signatories are to be commended for contributing their views in one of the most consequential elections in our history.
The letter’s signatories include Anthony Fell, former CEO of RBC Capital Markets; mining tycoon Pierre Lassonde; Prem Watsa, CEO of conglomerate Fairfax Financial; Brian Porter, former CEO of Scotiabank; Edward Sonshine, former CEO of RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust; and Peter Gilgan, CEO of Mattamy Homes.
That impressive cross-section of Corporate Canada seeks greater restraint in government spending; rapid approvals for housing and infrastructure projects; more investment in energy production and distribution; accelerated critical minerals development; eliminating impediments to productivity growth, including interprovincial trade barriers; cutting obsolete government regulations; and a more favourable tax regime to spur business investment and innovation.
Common sense ideas all, and all featured prominently in Carney’s agenda of turning Canada into the strongest economy in the G7. Carney has allocated $5 billion to upgrading Canada’s trade infrastructure of ports, railways, airports and highways to get our exports to world markets more efficiently. He also promises to roughly double annual housing production to about 500,000 homes. And he has promised to make Canada “the world’s leading energy superpower in both clean and conventional energy.”
Those are not vague aspirations. They are stated commitments to which Carney and his Liberal government will be held.
Carney says he will reduce growth in average annual government program spending to less than two per cent, in line with inflation and population growth, down from an average of almost nine per cent in the previous decade. And Carney vows to “eliminate outdated or unnecessary rules” and regulations.
In the wider economy, Carney’s measures to increase productivity growth, in which Canada lags most of its G7 peers, include a July 1 deadline for achieving agreement among the provinces and territories in eradicating internal trade barriers, and eliminating most exemptions in the Canadian Free Trade Agreement.
To “attract the best talent in the world,” Carney says he will reform the immigration system to recruit more skilled workers “to help high-growth Canadian businesses and entrepreneurs.” Ottawa will work with the provinces and territories to harmonize employment credentials, so that workers at home and from abroad “can contribute their skills to the economy more quickly.”
Those measures will, Carney asserts, “drive down costs for Canadians and businesses, strengthen supply chains (and) increase productivity.”
Carney calculates that removing internal trade barriers will increase Canadian GDP by as much as $200 billion.
And Carney says he will “get big projects built quickly” by creating a collaborative system he calls One Project, One Review, “ensuring that projects only go through one review.” In this new approval regime, Ottawa, premiers and Indigenous governing bodies will try to eliminate duplication of environmental and other project assessments.
Carney promises that major projects will be approved in two years, compared with the five-year timeline of the previous government.
There is some room to cut corporate taxes, but not as much as the open letter’s signatories might believe. With a current corporate tax rate of 26.2 per cent, Canada is on par with the G7 average of 26.5 per cent. But the rate could be trimmed to be more competitive with the U.S. rate of 21 per cent.
Carney is offering new and expanded tax credits to “de-risk” and expedite investment in critical minerals exploration and extraction.
While comprehensive, that’s not the complete wish list Canadians might hope for. It is largely silent, for instance, on addressing the crises in underfunded health care and education; strengthening the social safety net; and spurring the development of more internal processing of Canada’s natural resources wealth, which often is done abroad, where the greatest value from our endowment of petroleum, forest products and minerals is captured.
And while Carney has promised to reinvent the Ontario-based auto sector to make it more resilient in coping with U.S. tariffs, he has yet to explain how he will do so. One option is auto-sector production of vehicles and equipment for the Canadian military and our agricultural, forestry and mining sectors, products that are currently imported.
The “Friends” would do well to follow up with report cards on Carney’s progress. In business as in life, you can’t achieve progress unless you measure it.
