This year's catalogue of the top barriers to business competitiveness in Canada should be posted on corporate bulletin boards everywhere.
The BC Chamber of Commerce (BCCC) and its chamber brethren across the country initiated the annual inventory of anti-innovation stumbling blocks and enterprise speed bumps in 2012 to draw attention to the many barriers that are limiting
Canada’s economic potential and to light a fire under government to eliminate them so the country can compete globally.
Some progress has been made, but significant stumbling blocks remain.
Atop this year’s chamber list: Canada’s skills gap and the country’s inability to produce the graduates its industries need. That gap is especially acute in this province, where the Conference Board of Canada points out in a recent report that B.C.’s skills shortages and mismatches annually cost the economy $4.7 billion in forgone GDP and $616 million in provincial taxes.
However, the BCCC’s forecast of a million jobs being created in B.C. over the next decade depends in large part on removal of other barriers to competitiveness, especially as they relate to the development of liquefied natural gas and other new industries.
Lack of clarity over aboriginal land title, for example, is a major barrier here that government has yet to tackle in any meaningful way. As the chamber points out, that leaves project developers without clear ground rules of what community consultation in isolated areas of the province ultimately involves and where their responsibility ends and government’s begins. That confusion adds a potential game-breaking variable to multibillion-dollar projects in B.C. that competing regions aren’t hobbled with.
Other key barriers highlighted by the chamber network include internal trade barriers between provinces, the country’s overly complex and expensive tax system and inadequate export infrastructure.
The chamber top 10 is a challenging to-do list by any measure. Making inroads in it will therefore require the co-operative efforts of business, government and labour.
In a vast country where regional self-interest still prevails, that will be the toughest challenge of all.
