Blog

Trade-war chaos and confusion are creating a perfect storm for sellers' inflation—when companies with market control choose to hike prices to gouge consumers and grow their profits when they have the chance. As SCP Fellow Kaylie Tiessen writes, this profit-led inflation often hides behind other drivers and can blindside us if we’re not watching closely. There are good reasons to accept some tariff-related price increases—elbows up, right? But she outlines three ways we can stop opportunistic sellers from using this trade chaos to mask their profiteering. We can stop powerful companies from exploiting confusion and weak oversight so working people don't pay the price while profits soar.

As our new government pursues growth and a nation-building agenda, we should remember this lesson from history: too often, we build and invest, only to sell off our assets and resources to the highest foreign bidder, leaving us economically vulnerable. In this moment of extreme peril, SCP CEO Matthew Mendelsohn asks how we should “build, baby, build” in a way that doesn’t merely accelerate the trends towards consolidation of wealth and deeper economic dependence. Canada has everything we need to emerge stronger from this period of geopolitical disruption if we put economic sovereignty and broad access to wealth-building at the heart of our agenda.

Canadian businesses are immensely profitable, but businesses simply haven't been reinvesting in them. As Tom Goldsmith writes in Orbit Policy's Deep Dives, the financialization of Canada’s economy and the high levels of rent extraction that accompany it are barriers to innovation. We are impoverishing ourselves over the long term to support short-term financial gains. If we care about innovation and productivity, then we need to focus far more critical attention on corporate Canada.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has a monumental task to lead Canadians through the turmoil of a second Donald Trump term, while also addressing various crises: affordability, housing, toxic drugs and health care, to name a few. For Truthout, Nora Loreto interviewed SCP Fellow Silas Xuereb about the crises that loomed over Canada's recent federal election and one fundamental cause that was never clearly identified: concentrated corporate power.

Scaling up access to school meals through Canada's National School Food Policy is a big win for children and families. As SCP Fellow Sarah Doyle and SCP Advisor Alex Himelfarb outline, the program could also be a win for agrifood businesses, the climate and workers, contributing to a more resilient, just, sustainable and less dependent Canadian economy. The key is an ambitious and strategic approach to food procurement—one that shifts the focus from minimizing price to maximizing public value.

Certain partisans have been citing Canada's performance on per capita GDP as evidence of a supposed 'lost decade' and economic mismanagement. In Policy Options, economist and director of the Centre for Future Work Jim Stanford deconstructs this arbitrary and misleading statistic. In the first of a two-part analysis, he explains multiple factors affecting both the numerator and denominator in this headline-grabbing number and how recent trends in GDP per capita say more about rapid immigration than about Canada’s overall economic health.

Some business and political commentators cite a growing gap between the per capita GDP of Canada and the U.S. as evidence of Canada’s purported economic dysfunction. In Policy Options, economist and director of the Centre for Future Work Jim Stanford deconstructs this arbitrary and misleading statistic. In the second of a two-part analysis, he explains how Canada is not poorer than Alabama and how, despite lower economic growth per person, most Canadians earn more, live longer and fare better than Americans.

Many Canadian businesses and workers are facing looming furloughs and layoffs. As CEO of Challenge Factory Lisa Taylor argues, these workforce disruptions should be seen as an opportunity to invest in our workers, in our businesses and industries and in the future we want for our families and communities. We must evolve government programs to incentivize businesses to train and upskill workers to meet new market demands and execute on new strategies, rather than lay those employees off. Recovery from workforce shocks is possible with creative ways to reinvent and transform.

Canada’s pension funds need to step up and help the Canadian economy pivot. They can do so in keeping with their fiduciary duty to their contributors, but in a way that builds long-term economic resilience. SCP's Matthew Mendelsohn and Michelle Arnold argue that defenders of the status quo are mistaken in their analysis, and that the federal government can use its fiscal power in targeted ways to get more capital into the hands of Canadian businesses and communities.

For small businesses across Canada, a lack of commercial tenancy protections means unexpected rent increases, undue financial distress and even threat of closure. As SCP Fellow Liliana Locke argues, there are jurisdictions that have solved for commercial rent hikes that we can learn from in this moment. Smart policy in the commercial rent market would provide Canada’s small businesses the vital stability they need to sustain and grow their businesses through these turbulent economic times.