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家拿大投资危机：资本萎缩削弱竞争力及工资水平
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家拿大投资危机：资本萎缩削弱竞争力及工资水平
2025年12月4日
Canada's Investment Crisis: Shrinking Capital Undermines Competitiveness and Wages
December 4, 2025
Mawakina Bafale Research Officer
William B.P. Robson President EmeritusBusiness investment in Canada has been so weak since 2015 that capital per member of the workforce is falling, undermining growth in labour productivity and compensation.
The longstanding gap between investment per available worker in Canada and other OECD countries narrowed from the late 1990s through the early 2010s, but has since widened, especially relative to the United States. In 2025, Canadian workers will likely receive only 70 cents of new capital for every dollar received by their counterparts in the OECD as a whole and 55 cents for every dollar received by US workers.
Labour productivity and business investment go together. Rising productivity creates opportunities and competitive pressures that spur businesses to invest. Investment increases productivity by equipping workers with better tools. Low investment per worker signals that businesses see fewer opportunities in Canada and prefigures lagging growth in earnings and living standards.
Regulatory and fiscal policy changes, particularly those affecting natural resources and investment-related taxes, can prevent Canadian workers from being relegated to lower value-added activities compared to their counterparts in the United States and other advanced economies.
Introduction and Overview
Slow growth in Canadian productivity and living standards has become a top-of-mind concern for Canadian economy watchers and, increasingly, for Canadians themselves. Recent publications highlight Canada’s declining real gross domestic product (GDP) per person and its ominous implications for future living standards (Porter 2024, Marion and Ducharme 2024, McCormack and Wang 2024). Escalating trade tensions between the United States and Canada have led many firms to delay investment decisions (Bank of Canada 2025). Sluggish productivity growth has been a key factor behind Canada’s stagnant living standards, as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently highlighted in its Economic Survey of Canada (OECD 2025a).
The OECD predicts that the real GDP per capita in Canada will fall for the third consecutive year in 2025. This slide is a troubling break from Canada’s historical pattern of rising living standards. It contrasts with what is happening in other OECD countries, which have overtaken Canada, and contrasts especially strongly with the United States (Figure 1). Declining output per person implies that Canada is becoming a less attractive place for talented people to live and work.
Many influences on GDP per person may not be easily or desirably influenced by policy. More people participating in the workforce and/or working longer hours will raise output per person, but more work per person has obvious costs. Higher human capital – enhanced skills and more education – and improved technology can raise output per person, but building human capital takes time, and improved technology is not, on its own, something policymakers can directly engineer. Increasing the amount of capital per worker, by contrast, is relatively straightforward to achieve and has positive results that are relatively likely to occur.
High or low levels of business capital, such as non-residential structures, machinery and equipment, and intellectual property products, are strongly associated with higher or lower output per worker. Productivity gains spur investment, and investment in turn boosts productivity. Higher productivity creates opportunities and competitive threats that promote business investment. In turn, higher business investment gives workers newer and better tools, embodies new technologies and gives managers and workers new opportunities to “learn by doing” – all of which raise each worker’s productivity.https://cdhowe.org/publication/bafale-robson-canadian-investment-intellectual-property-products-too-low/.
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The views expressed here are those of the authors and are not attributable to their respective organizations. The C.D. Howe Institute does not take corporate positions on policy matters.
