Globe editorial: Tweets and platitudes will not defeat antisemitism

2025/09/04 Leave a comment

Good points:

…It bears repeating: Whatever your view on Israel’s actions in Gaza, Jewish Canadians are not responsible for the actions of the Netanyahu government, any more than Muslim Canadians are responsible for the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah, or Russian Canadians are culpable for Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression.

That simple fact seems to elude the protesters who target the places that Jewish Canadians gather, including near the Ottawa grocery store where last week’s attack took place. Those protesters have a constitutional right to express their anger. But they also have moral responsibilities, namely to ask themselves whether the manner of their protest is fostering an atmosphere of hate….

Source: Tweets and platitudes will not defeat antisemitism

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Dozens fined for breaking rules of Ontario immigrant program that has come under scrutiny

2025/09/04 Leave a comment

Of note. Good that some have been caught:

Ontario has issued $509,100 in penalties against 77 legal representatives and employers for breaking the rules of a program that gives the province the power to pick immigrants who best suit its labour needs.

That’s the total amount of fines levied since the introduction of a provincial law in 2018 that established an administrative and enforcement regime to ensure the integrity of the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP). 

The fast-growing program — which has seen a tripling of allocated spots from 6,000 in 2018 to 21,500 in 2024 — was the focus of a critical report by the Auditor General last year that revealed “weaknesses” in its ability to prevent and detect misrepresentation. 

Under the program, a foreign national needs a certificate of nomination from Ontario before applying for permanent residence through the federal Immigration Department. There are nine OINP streams, including three that require a job offer by an employer in the province. 

Those fined include a lawyer, 21 immigration consultants and 55 employers, according to a freedom-of-information request made to the Ontario Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development.

The violations include failing to provide information that is accurate, correct and not misleading, or failing to make “reasonable efforts” to ensure that in applications, the ministry said on its website.

Between 2018 and 2024, program staff issued 6,506 notices of intent to refuse an applicant’s nomination application, said the ministry. Out of those, 2,703 ended up being rejected after further inquiries. Notices of intent are issued when an individual’s qualifications and information are in question….

Source: Dozens fined for breaking rules of Ontario immigrant program that has come under scrutiny

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Chinese students take Ottawa to court over study permit delays

2025/09/04 Leave a comment

Security clearances take time, particularly for citizens of countries with a history of foreign interference and opaque organizations, making some being caught up in the vetting process:

Dozens of Chinese graduate students are accusing Ottawa of discrimination because their study permit applications have been left in limbo for months, preventing them from beginning their advanced degrees at Canadian universities.

“It’s already [done] very serious damage to my life,” Yixin Cheng, a 27-year-old would-be PhD student in computer science at UBC, told CBC News from Hangzhao, China.

Cheng is one of a group of 25 students who have filed a case in Federal Court against Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), alleging their files have been unfairly stalled in the security screening phase. All of them have been accepted into graduate-level programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at universities including UBC, McGill and the University of Waterloo.

All 25 were still in China as the new school year began this week.

“Basically, the IRCC pressed the pause button for my life for over one year,” said Cheng.

Cheng applied for a study permit back in May 2024, and quit a high-paying job because he expected to be at UBC last fall.  The IRCC website says the standard processing time for students from China is four weeks. …

Their lawyer, Toronto-based Vakkas Bilsin, says their similarities  — all Chinese citizens, all seeking graduate programs in STEM — made him think “there is something serious going on.”

He says the lack of transparency is particularly frustrating, saying that four or five weeks after some students had submitted their applications, IRCC’s application tracker said the agency had only just started the background check process.

“We still don’t understand why a detailed, extensive security check is necessary in this specific circumstance of these students,” he said.

IRCC said in an emailed statement it is “committed to a fair and non-discriminatory application of immigration procedures. All applicants seeking to come to Canada — regardless of their country of origin or the program under which they apply — are subject to the same screening processes.”

It says the website only offers a general idea of how long the process may take and that, under the law, all people looking to enter the country must meet admissibility requirements, including a security screening.

Source: Chinese students take Ottawa to court over study permit delays

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Clark: There is no flood of newcomers anymore, Mr. Poilievre

2025/09/03 Leave a comment

Would be helpful if the data on opendata was disaggregated between new permits and extensions for temporary residents but good to have this analysis. And as I indicated in my regular tracking deck, there has been a significant decline:

…Now Ottawa has embarked on a process of reducing the numbers of temporary residents. One part is reducing new arrivals. The IRCC reports there were 214,000 fewer new arrivals of temporary workers and international students in the first half of 2025 than in the same period the year before.

But another part is an effort to turn temporary residents into permanent residents. Many of the 395,000 people to get permanent resident status in 2025 were already here.

In total, the immigration plan calls for slightly more people to leave in 2025 than arrive. Already, population growth in the first quarter of 2025, according to Statistics Canada, was 0.0 per cent.

The Liberals certainly deserve mountains of blame for the failures of 2021 to 2024, but Mr. Poilievre has no business pretending the number of immigrants is still going up.

That’s especially true when there are so many other big problems in the immigration system to fix – the things that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has so far failed to correct.

The labour market impact assessment system used to determine whether a company can hire temporary foreign workers is an utter failure. The low-wage stream of the temporary foreign workers program, which brings in occupations such as fry cooks, should be completely scrapped. The selection of economic immigrants, turned into a hodgepodge by the Liberals, should be returned to a predictable, points-based system. Those are real immigration issues. 

But there is no flood of newcomers. Rapid population growth has stopped. There are other things to fix.

Source: There is no flood of newcomers anymore, Mr. Poilievre

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Globe editorial: A premier goes out on wing and a prayer

2025/09/03 Leave a comment

Valid questions but some of the public prayers have been more political than spiritual in nature:

…It is already presumed that whatever law the government tables will infringe on an individual’s freedoms of expression, of religion, of conscience and of peaceful assembly, and then duck behind the notwithstanding clause. But how far will the government go?

What happens to a Quaker standing silently in a park? Is the government aware that this can constitute a form of prayer? Should the person be detained for questioning? 

What about someone doing yoga in a park? While yoga is generally a secular practice in Canada, it can for some be a devotional exercise and a communion with a higher power. How will the government know what intentions the person doing yoga al fresco has set?

What about doing tai chi in a park? It, too, is most often a secular, meditative practice in Canada. It is not a religion in and of itself, but it can be used as part of a spiritual journey by people of different faiths. Like yoga, it depends on intention.

What about Falun Gong, a modern religious movement devoted to a god-like leader that has been banned in China? Its practitioners are often seen outdoors in parks, and sometimes on sidewalks in front of Chinese consulates, their hands clasped in the prayer position. Will Beijing suddenly have an ally in the suppression of Falun Gong members? 

What about the annual Roman Catholic Good Friday procession in Old Montreal, an event involving public prayer? Will that still be allowed? It could make a secularist uncomfortable.

Or what about a soccer player who, smack in the middle of a public stadium, crosses himself before a game or when he scores a goal? Is that permissible?

If this seems ridiculous, it is no more ridiculous than the failing CAQ government taking a desperate swing at a divisive issue to save its skin.

How far Mr. Legault goes with this will be telling. Is it even possible to ban public prayer based on the actions of some Muslim protesters without also ensuring that people of other faiths and beliefs aren’t allowed to get away with the same infraction? 

Or is that the whole point – to again single out the one group that was most affected by Bill 21 and its ban on hijabs, and which has so often come under fire in Quebec?

Like yoga, it’s all about setting intentions. 

Source: A premier goes out on wing and a prayer

Filed under Laïcité, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Danella Aichele: Canada’s immigration policy must address the growing number of students who don’t speak English or French

2025/09/03 Leave a comment

Surely the provinces should ensure this input as part of the annual levels plan consultations. In general, Canada scores highly on PISA for immigrant integration and outcomes:

…A better approach would involve genuine intergovernmental coordination. If Ottawa intends to maintain high levels of immigration, it should consult with provinces and large urban school boards before announcing new targets. Federal funding should be aligned with provincial education budgets so that school systems can hire more ESL teachers, develop tailored curricula, and ease the transition for newcomers.

This wouldn’t be administratively burdensome. Immigration is heavily concentrated in a relatively small number of urban centres. The challenge isn’t complexity, it’s negligence.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has framed immigration as central to Canada’s growth strategy. He is right. But growth cannot come at the expense of cohesion. If immigration is to succeed, it must be matched by the resources and the planning required to make integration work.

That means Ottawa can’t simply drop new arrival numbers into the system and hope for the best. It needs to start in the classrooms where integration is lived and learned every day. Immigration targets should reflect not just national ambitions but the realities in Brampton, Calgary, and Montreal schools.

Canada’s future prosperity and social cohesion depend on getting this balance right. Immigration works best when it is ambitious and realistic—when it opens doors but also equips schools, teachers, and communities with the tools they need. Anything less risks undermining public confidence and shortchanging the very students who will shape the country’s future.

Danella Aichele is a former teacher with the Calgary Board of Education with a Master’s of Public Policy from the University of Calgary.

Source: Danella Aichele: Canada’s immigration policy must address the growing number of students who don’t speak English or French

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Quebec turns down federal funding for addressing systemic racism in justice system

2025/09/03 2 Comments

Willful blindness:

The Quebec government has turned down federal funding aimed at combatting systemic racism in the criminal justice system, saying it doesn’t agree with the program’s approach.

The federal government first offered $6.64-million in funding to provinces and territories in 2021 to improve fairness in the courts. Spread out over five years, the money was aimed at addressing the overrepresentation of Black people in the criminal justice system by promoting the use of race and cultural assessments before sentencing. 

These assessments – known as Impact of Race and Culture Assessments, or IRCAs – analyze how a convicted person’s experience of systemic racism contributed to their criminal charges.

While most provinces have accepted the federal funding aimed at supporting defendants or to cover the costs of assessments through their legal aid programs, Quebec has been opposed to providing this type of support.

“We are not party to any funding agreement involving Impact of Race and Culture Assessments, as Quebec doesn’t subscribe to the approach on which the funding program is based, namely systemic racism,” Marie-Hélène Mercier, a spokesperson for Quebec’s Justice Department, told The Canadian Press in an e-mail….

Source: Quebec turns down federal funding for addressing systemic racism in justice system

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Boisvert: La moronisation des États-Unis

2025/09/03 Leave a comment

Sadly accurate:

« Nous aurons une annonce en septembre tel que promis, a-t-il dit dans une séance publique du cabinet Trump. Nous avons découvert que des interventions, certaines interventions causent clairement presque certainement l’autisme. »

Ce n’est pas une mince déclaration. L’autisme fait l’objet de recherches depuis des dizaines d’années. Les causes, disent les chercheurs, sont multiples. Génétiques, environnementales…

Et voilà qu’en cinq mois, des « recherches » commandées par Kennedy seraient parvenues à une percée spectaculaire.

On sait que Kennedy a déjà comparé la vaccination des enfants aux expériences menées par les nazis. On l’a vu souvent prétendre faussement que l’autisme est causé par les vaccins. On peut donc parier que les « interventions » dont il parle, et qui causent « clairement presque certainement » l’autisme, seront… les vaccins.

Le « chercheur » à l’origine de la théorie des vaccins causant l’autisme, le médecin britannique Andrew Wakefield, a été radié de son ordre professionnel. Hélas, son « étude » frauduleuse a été publiée dans The Lancet, et continue à circuler chez les antivax.

La preuve a depuis été faite et refaite qu’il n’y a aucun lien entre la vaccination et l’autisme.

Quand RFK était une simple célébrité, il causait déjà beaucoup de tort en répandant des faussetés scientifiques, de la pseudoscience et des théories du complot.

Mais maintenant, le président a nommé ce « sceptique » des vaccins, pour ne pas dire cet antivax, à la tête de la Santé. Le Sénat a confirmé sa nomination. Ce ne sont plus des opinions, qu’il émet. Ce sont des décisions.

Et parmi celles-ci, il y a le congédiement mercredi de la Dre Susan Monarez, qui venait tout juste d’être confirmée dans ses fonctions de directrice de la Santé publique, à la tête des Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Le motif ? « Insubordination ». La Dre Monarez avait simplement rappelé à RFK que les nouvelles directives sur la vaccination ne correspondaient pas aux données scientifiques. Le secrétaire a en effet décidé qu’il n’y aurait de vaccination contre la COVID-19 que pour les personnes âgées. Basé sur quoi ? Ses propres avis. Car en juin, Kennedy a foutu à la porte tous les membres du comité de consultation sur la vaccination.

De fait, les CDC ont perdu « des milliers » d’employés et la moitié de leur budget. Certains de leurs meilleurs experts en matière de maladies contagieuses sont partis.

Les États-Unis ont aussi coupé les ponts avec l’Organisation mondiale de la santé. Annulé des contrats de recherche à hauteur de 500 millions sur la technologie de l’ARN messager. En plus de comprimer massivement les budgets de recherche et les fonds universitaires. Ce n’est pas pour rien que 75 % des chercheurs américains (sondage de Nature) disent vouloir trouver du boulot à l’étranger.

Ça ne change rien pour l’instant. Mais la capacité du pays à faire face à une épidémie, une pandémie, une crise sanitaire est sérieusement affectée. Comme les États-Unis ont été un leader mondial en la matière, cela touche le monde entier. Sans parler des risques de contagion idéologique et de contagion tout court.

Ça ne change rien pour l’instant, mais il y aura des morts.

Le démantèlement de la Santé publique américaine s’ajoute à toutes les attaques frontales contre la science. Et jusqu’à la collecte de données.

La destruction volontaire de deux satellites parfaitement fonctionnels qui mesurent le taux de CO2 dans l’atmosphère s’inscrit dans le même superbe projet de rendre aux États-Unis sa grandeur par l’accroissement de l’ignorance.

Quand il a écrit The Assault on Reason (La raison assiégée), en 2007, Al Gore se plaignait de la dégradation du débat public, dominé par des émotions aux dépens des faits. Il n’avait pas imaginé qu’un jour, un président congédierait la patronne du bureau des statistiques du travail parce qu’il n’aimait pas ses données.

Même les plus grands pourfendeurs républicains du « gros gouvernement » n’ont pas voulu éradiquer les données ou nommer volontairement des super-incompétents dans des postes clés.

Le plus consternant est évidemment l’aplaventrisme du Congrès. Le sénateur républicain Bill Cassidy a déclaré jeudi qu’il veut maintenant « superviser » les CDC, vu le bordel actuel.

Ce même sénateur, un médecin, avait fait semblant d’hésiter à confirmer la nomination de RFK à la santé, vu ses déclarations sur les vaccins. Il a longuement expliqué à quel point les vaccins sauvent des vies. Mais à la fin, bien entendu, il a voté pour sa confirmation. Si une personne aurait dû savoir ce qui se tramait, c’est bien lui. Et pourtant, il a ouvert toutes grandes les portes du labo aux idéologues de RFK pour qu’ils le saccagent.

Ce n’est même plus au nom d’une volonté de « réforme » des institutions scientifiques que tout cela est entrepris. Les CDC comme les universités comme tout le gouvernement méritent des réformes et des ménages périodiques, bien entendu.

Ce à quoi on assiste, c’est carrément la destruction de ces institutions qui ont été des références d’excellence en sciences de la santé, en sciences naturelles, en économie, etc.

On a déjà prétendu que John F. Kennedy s’était entouré des meilleurs. « The Best and the Brightest. »

Aujourd’hui, c’est à la moronisation de ce grand pays qu’on assiste.

Source: La moronisation des États-Unis

“We will have an announcement in September as promised,” he said in a public session of the Trump cabinet. We have discovered that interventions, certain interventions clearly almost certainly cause autism. ”

This is not a small statement. Autism has been the subject of research for decades. The causes, the researchers say, are multiple. Genetic, environmental…

And now in five months, “research” commissioned by Kennedy would have reached a spectacular breakthrough.

It is known that Kennedy has already compared the vaccination of children to the experiments conducted by the Nazis. We have often seen him falsely claim that autism is caused by vaccines. We can therefore bet that the “interventions” he is talking about, and which “clearly almost certainly” cause autism, will be… vaccines.

The “researcher” behind the theory of autism-causing vaccines, British physician Andrew Wakefield, has been removed from his professional order. Alas, his fraudulent “study” was published in The Lancet, and continues to circulate among anti-vax.

Proof has since been made and redone that there is no link between vaccination and autism.

When RFK was a simple celebrity, he was already causing a lot of harm by spreading scientific falsehoods, pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.

But now, the president has named this “skeptic” of vaccines, not to say this anti-vax, at the head of Health. The Senate confirmed his appointment. These are no longer opinions, which he expresses. These are decisions.

And among these is the dismissal on Wednesday of Dr. Susan Monarez, who had just been confirmed as Director of Public Health, at the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The reason? “Insubordination”. Dr. Monarez had simply reminded RFK that the new vaccination guidelines did not correspond to the scientific data. The secretary has indeed decided that there would only be vaccination against COVID-19 for the elderly. Based on what? His own opinions. Because in June, Kennedy kicked out all the members of the vaccination consultation committee.

In fact, the CDC has lost “thousands” of employees and half of their budget. Some of their best infectious disease experts are gone.

The United States has also cut ties with the World Health Organization. Cancelled 500 million research contracts on messenger RNA technology. In addition to massively compressing research budgets and university funds. It is not for nothing that 75% of American researchers (Nature survey) say they want to find a job abroad.

It doesn’t change anything for now. But the country’s ability to deal with an epidemic, a pandemic, a health crisis is seriously affected. As the United States has been a world leader in this area, it affects the whole world. Not to mention the risks of ideological contagion and contagion altogether.

It doesn’t change anything for now, but there will be deaths.

The dismantling of American Public Health is in addition to all the frontal attacks against science. And up to data collection.

The voluntary destruction of two perfectly functional satellites that measure the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is part of the same superb project to restore the greatness to the United States by increasing ignorance.

When he wrote The Assault on Reason, in 2007, Al Gore complained of the degradation of public debate, dominated by emotions at the expense of facts. He had not imagined that one day a president would fire the boss of the labor statistics office because he did not like her data.

Even the biggest Republican slitters of the “big government” did not want to eradicate the data or voluntarily appoint super-incompetents in key positions.

The most appalling thing is obviously the aplaventrism of the Congress. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy said Thursday that he now wants to “supervise” the CDC, given the current mess.

This same senator, a doctor, had pretended to be hesitant to confirm the appointment of RFK to health, given his statements on vaccines. He explained at length how vaccines save lives. But in the end, of course, he voted for his confirmation. If a person should have known what was brewing, it was him. And yet, he opened the doors of the laboratory wide to RFK ideologists so that they could vandalish him.

It is no longer even in the name of a desire to “reform” scientific institutions that all this is undertaken. The CDC as well as the universities as the whole government deserve reforms and periodic households, of course.

What we are witnessing is the destruction of these institutions that have been references of excellence in health sciences, natural sciences, economics, etc.

It has already been claimed that John F. Kennedy had surrounded himself with the best. “The Best and the Brightest. ”

Today, we are witnessing the moronization of this great country.

Filed under Government, Trump administration Tagged with ,

French:The Corporate Logo That Broke the Internet

2025/09/02 Leave a comment

The usual distraction and “flood the zone” tactics by the Trump administration and its enablers:

…The process of stoking outrage has another effect: It crowds out the news cycle. Most Democrats I know would be shocked at how little the average Republican knows about Trump’s actual conduct and his actual wrongdoing. Republicans can, however, cite chapter and verse about left-wing outrages and left-wing overreactions to Trump.

That creates a reality where they simply can’t conceive of how any reasonable, rational person would vote Democratic or oppose the president and his policies.

The Sweeney and Cracker Barrel stories highlight the new right’s theory of change. It sees the social liberalization of America as primarily an elite-driven phenomenon. According to this narrative, the left seized the most powerful institutions of American life and then imposed its delusional and unnatural ideas from the top down, in part through shaming, fear and bullying.

The solution, then, is obvious. Either seize or destroy left-dominated institutions, replace them with right-dominated institutions and elites and then impose conservative values on society, if necessary, through the same intolerant means.

This is why you see some figures on the right turning even to Marxists, such as Antonio Gramsci, to inspire them to “cultural hegemony.”

In this version of the right, cancel culture is only a problem if you’re not the one doing the canceling. The conservative argument for liberty for all is replaced by a populist will to power, one so all-consuming that it exercises veto power over corporate logo redesigns it does not like.

At the moment, MAGA’s cultural power is on the rise, but it’s ultimately on a fool’s errand. Can anyone look at the history of the last 10 years and say that bullying or intolerance helped the left? Or is it more accurate to say that the worst excesses of left-wing cancel culture helped trigger the public reaction that ushered MAGA back into power?

MAGA’s intolerance won’t fare any better. Constant outrage is energizing, at least for a while, for partisans and activists. It’s exhausting for everyone else. The more that MAGA tries to bully America, the more resentment it will build. Bullies only win for a while, and when the backlash to the backlash comes, MAGA will have only itself to blame.

Source: The Corporate Logo That Broke the Internet

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Polk: Canadian business needs to walk the walk on productivity

2025/09/02 1 Comment

Welcome commentary on the role and responsibilities of the private sector:

It is an annual rite of passage stretching back 30 years. Canadian business leaders sound a warning klaxon about the threat of Canada’s declining productivity. Then they will present a detailed list of policy asks to the federal government that, if implemented they say, will empower Canadian business to reverse our downward productivity trend. 

In many ways, federal governments — Conservative and Liberal — have answered the business call. Need free trade with the United States and Mexico? Done. Need to balance the federal budget to avoid national bankruptcy? Done. Need a low federal debt to GDP ratio? Done. Need corporate taxes rates that are competitive with the G-7? Done. Need business to be supported through the COVID-19 pandemic? Done.

Yet, year after year, Canadian productivity growth stagnates or declines. And year after year, the federal government is blamed by business and business media for failing to deliver a policy suite that will solve the productivity conundrum.

One could perhaps forgive a certain eye-rolling cynicism about business alarmism. And it sometimes seems to federal policymakers that businesses tend to shift the productivity policy goal posts for success in an effort to keep Ottawa the focus of criticism. 

On the flip side, there are quite legitimate business frustrations and complaints about how Ottawa operates. Canada’s inadequate depreciation rules, regulatory uncertainty, and slower project approvals can make capital projects less attractive. Programs like the SR&ED tax are rightly criticized as bureaucratic and more useful for tax planning than for encouraging real risk-taking.

Generational failure

At most, however, the federal government can create a pro-productivity framework. Improving productivity requires not just government policy shifts but also decisions made in boardrooms, shop floors, and offices across the country. On this score, while businesses have talked the talk on productivity for a generation, they have continually failed to walk the walk.

Canada has world-class researchers and scientists, yet business spending on research and development (R&D) is among the lowest in the OECD. Too often, Canadian companies rely on imported technologies rather than creating or adapting their own. This dependency leaves them vulnerable to foreign competitors and stifles the domestic innovation ecosystem.

A related difference between Canadian firms and their international peers lies in technology adoption. Businesses in Canada tend to delay or avoid major investments in automation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and advanced analytics. This hesitancy often stems from cost concerns, risk aversion, or a “wait and see” mentality. But by holding back, firms are limiting their ability to produce more with the same resources.

Productivity is not only about machines — it is also about people. Workers equipped with up-to-date skills are far more likely to generate innovative ideas, master new technologies, and adapt to evolving markets. Unfortunately, Canadian businesses spend significantly less per employee on training and development than U.S. and European counterparts.

The point here is not to score governmental debating points against Canadian business in a seemingly endless passing of the productivity buck back and forth. The government-business productivity dialogue to which we have become accustomed is a luxury we can no longer afford in light of rising American economic nationalism.

Canada’s economic history has been defined by its privileged relationship with the two globally predominant economies of the last 150 years: the United Kingdom and the United States. Some may think that President Donald Trump’s assault on the global rules-based economic system will pass when he leaves the scene. However, it may also be the case that Trump has tapped into a political vein that has considerable staying power among Americans who feel dispossessed by globalization.

Profound shock

Prime Minister Mark Carnery has recognized this possibility and is trying to jolt Canadians into making big choices at a time when the nation may well be losing its privileged place under the American economic umbrella. This would be a profound shock to federal policy-making and to the way that Canadian companies do business.  

Carney has signalled what is coming federally by the breakneck speed with which he secured the Building Canada Bill Act, which seeks to remove the typical bureaucratic encumbrances that have held back major economy-building projects. His choice of Michael Sabia as a new Clerk of the Privy Council signals he will reward risk-taking and innovation above all else and penalize mere process management.  

Canadian businesses must meet this moment with equally bold thinking and action in a new, more uncertain economic reality. They must invest in a culture that rewards productive investment and upskills its workers. They must reward experimentation and tolerate calculated risk. They must uncover more efficient ways of doing things rather than copying existing models. Above all, they must adopt a true, globally competitive mindset beyond the comfortable habits ingrained during the now declining economic Pax Americana.

In other words, Canada is at an economic crossroads. The federal government seems to recognize this. 

But whether we travel the right road ahead will depend very much on whether Canadian businesses stop talking the talk on productivity and finally walk the walk.

Ken Polk is a public affairs counsellor at Compass Rose. Previously, Ken served as chief speechwriter, deputy director of communications and legislative assistant to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

Source: Canadian business needs to walk the walk on productivity

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