Going for Gold: Winning Corporate
Strategies and Their Impact on Canada
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Canada may be a small economy, but it does not lack for success stories. From natural resources to high technology, Canadians and their enterprises have made their mark around the world. As globalization and technological change transform their businesses, they are reshaping their strategies to ensure that their growth continues in the years ahead. The experience of Canada’s global champions shows that the passports of shareholders have little impact on corporate decisions in the new era, and that foreign ownership is not necessarily a barrier to the growth of influential and well-paying jobs in Canada. It is equally clear, however, that if Canada wants its companies to be able to compete with the best in the world, it must encourage them to achieve the scale necessary to play in the big leagues. A failure to adapt Canada’s policies, regulations and attitudes to the realities of global consolidation could […]
Global Champion or Falling Star? The Choice Canada Must Make
Global Champion or Falling Star? The Choice Canada Must Make
Global Champion or Falling Star? Canada Must Lead to
Succeed in the new Economy
Global Champion or Falling Star? Canada Must Lead to Succeed in the new Economy
Faster Economic Change is Needed to Meet Social
Goals and Prevent Loss of Canadian Talent and
Head Offices, Business Leaders say
Canada must lead to succeed in the New Economy, say the country’s top business executives in a major policy statement entitled Global Champion or Falling Star? The Choice Canada Must Make. The statement from the Business Council on National Issues (BCNI) says past policy choices on inflation, deficits and free trade have yielded great benefits. But governments have not yet grasped just how quickly the country must continue to move if Canadians want to improve their quality of life in the years ahead. Many Canadian companies, for their part, have been too conservative in evaluating new opportunities and too defensive in their strategies. In a global economy driven by rapidly advancing technologies, old virtues like letting market forces work matter more than ever. “What has changed is the speed with which even small disadvantages and momentary lapses of policy can turn champions into chumps,” the statement says. “Change makes a […]
Canada in the 21st Century: Optimism and Urgency in an Era of Accelerating Change, a Private Sector Perspective
Canada in the 21st Century: Optimism and Urgency in an Era of Accelerating Change, a Private Sector Perspective
Mediocrity or Excellence? What it Will Take to Make Canada a Global Leader
Mediocrity Or Excellence? What It Will Take To Make Canada A Global Leader
Growing and Sharing Wealth
the Double Challenge
Chairman, Honourable Members, Ladies and Gentlemen, Thank you for inviting us once again to appear before you, this time to discuss our recommendations for the year 2000 budget and beyond. We have submitted to you copies of a memorandum sent to the Prime Minister in September, which includes specific recommendations for the next budget. I do not plan to take up time by repeating them here, but I would like to elaborate on a couple of key points. I am as delighted as you are to be able to discuss surpluses rather than deficits. I also was encouraged by the willingness of the Minister of Finance to lay out a multi-year projection as a tool for generating debate. What concerns me is that too much of the debate I have heard to date treats these projections as a zero-sum game where all options are equal. What we have to remember […]
Storming the Status Quo:
on the Road to Making Canada a Global Leader
Six months ago, when the Business Council on National Issues launched the Canada Global Leadership Initiative, we described it as an effort to move our country’s policy agenda into a new era. Our mission was an ambitious one — we pledged to do everything in our power to help make Canada the best place in the world in which to live, to work, to invest and to grow. Behind us lay the great struggles against rampant inflation and runaway government deficits. Behind us lay the crusade to persuade Canadians to cast off the shackles of protectionism and embrace the disciplines and the rewards of the global marketplace. Behind us lay two decades of divisive debate and painful adjustments that today have yielded concrete results — a Canada with remarkably improved economic fundamentals. But Canada was not alone in embracing change. To the south, an amazing dynamism was carrying the United States, the laggard of […]
The Cheap Way to Compete for Jobs
In 1998, the blue-ribbon Technical Committee on Business Taxation chaired by Jack Mintz completed an extensive review of corporate taxation. Its report noted major disparities in the tax burden between industries, and highlighted the particularly onerous load weighing down the service sector — the source of most new jobs in the knowledge economy. It also showed how Canada’s tax competitiveness could be improved dramatically even on a revenue-neutral basis. But the federal government promptly put the question of corporate tax reform back on the shelf and has yet to signal any real interest in moving forward. In a recent follow-up study for the Business Council on National Issues, Mintz found that while Canadian reform proposals languish in limbo, other countries have seized on corporate tax cuts as the key to attracting investment, boosting economic growth and creating jobs. With the notable exception of the United States, most industrialized countries have been slashing […]
Perspectives, Autumn 1999: Excerpts from recent speeches by members of the Business Council on National Issues
Perspectives, Autumn 1999: Excerpts from recent speeches by members of the Business Council on National Issues
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