From Living Well to Working Well: Raising Canada's Performance in Non-residential Investment

Investment in plant and equipment per worker by Canadian businesses is picking up relative to counterparts elsewhere after years of underperformance. Canada’s relative improvement owes much to outperformance by resource-rich provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador being the most recent star, while Ontario continues to slip. Policies that increase competitive pressures to invest and remove biases against non-residential investment could boost capital spending by businesses and improve Canadian workers’ prospects for higher incomes in the future.