Canada Just Got the Crisis Manager It Desperately Needed
Mark Carney is more economist than politician. Reviving moribund productivity is a challenge he’s well suited to take on.
On the job.
Photographer: Andrej Ivanov/Getty Images North AmericaCanada’s Liberal Party is projected to win a fourth consecutive national election in a race that largely came down to which party would better stand up to US President Donald Trump. “We are over the shock of American betrayal,” Mark Carney, a former central banker and the leader of the Liberal Party, said in a victory speech early Tuesday morning. “But we should never forget the lessons.”
Indeed, there were many lessons, not the least of which is that Trump’s provocations on tariffs and musings about making Canada the 51st US state probably would have been easier to laugh off if the country’s leaders had taken steps to shore up its woeful productivity. Generally defined as the amount of output per hours worked, productivity is a bedrock of any strong economy, boosting competitiveness, helping to restrain inflation and raising living standards.