Not at all, says economist Brian Lewis. Why the Canadian economy is just fine.
For months, news headlines and economic pundits have been wringing their hands over Canada’s supposed productivity problem. A recent report by the University of Calgary showed that Canada’s productivity level, measured by real GDP per capita, was 12 per cent lower than the U.K.’s, 20 per cent lower than France’s and a whopping 32 per cent lower than the U.S.A.’s. Conventional wisdom holds that a flagging GDP will equal stagnating wages, higher cost of living and lowered government spending. Wealthsimple CEO Michael Katchen has called the situation an “absolute crisis,” while Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem has said it’s Canada’s “Achilles heel” in the sense that we’ve increased the number of workers without increasing their output. Brian Lewis, a public policy economist at U of T’s Munk School and former chief economist at Ontario’s Ministry of Labour, rejects the premise outright. He argues that GDP is merely one aspect of a country’s productivity and that we must also factor in things like Canada’s public-sector output, income equality and health. “We need to get one thing clear: GDP is an imperfect measure of productivity, despite its ubiquity in economic conversations. It especially falls short when comparing two nations with different structures and economic priorities,” he writes in an essay for Maclean’s. “While GDP measures output, it misses many factors that contribute to quality of life. It turns out that when we look at other measures, Canadians are doing pretty well compared to other countries.” —Emily Landau, executive editor |
Living in Toronto, Reece Martin has experienced Canada’s worsening gridlock problems firsthand—non-stop construction, blocked intersections and stalled transit projects galore. The city now has the worst traffic in North America; Vancouver isn’t far behind, and congestion in other major Canadian cities has spiked since 2022. “One of the more effective yet controversial fixes is congestion pricing, where people pay a fee for driving in city centres,” Martin writes in this essay for Maclean’s. The strategy has taken off in cities around the world. Here’s why Martin thinks it will help get things moving in Canada. |
Fatemeh Anvari, an English teacher from Tehran, was teaching a Grade 3 class in Gatineau in 2023 when her school’s principal pulled her aside and told her she had to stop wearing her hijab in the classroom. A few years earlier, Quebec’s Bill 21 had banned public servants in positions of authority, including teachers like Anvari, from wearing religious symbols. When Anvari refused to remove her hijab, she was sent home. “I haven’t returned to teaching,” she writes in an essay for Maclean’s. “I won’t stop advocating for the repeal of Bill 21. The fight isn’t just for Muslim women but for everyone—Sikhs, Jews, Christians. All of us are affected by this law, and all of us deserve better.” |
At 43, the Dominican-born, New York–based artist Firelei Báez may seem too young for a retrospective. But she’s already achieved more than many artists do in a lifetime: her vibrant paintings, sculptures and large-scale installations are housed at the Tate, the Baltimore Art Museum and the Crystal Bridges Museum, and she’s had shows at MoMA and the Venice Biennale. Báez is known for her layered exploration of colonial history and folklore: in “Sans-Souci” (above), she reimagines a sensual Black woman in a portrait by French neoclassical painter Jacques Amans as a figure adorned with a holographic tignon, a headscarf once mandated by law for women of colour in Louisiana. Now, Báez is coming to the Vancouver Art Gallery, where she’ll do much more than showcase her oeuvre: as part of the show, she’ll create two site-specific works and a huge installation for the gallery’s entrance. |
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