Canada’s productivity problem starts with the decisions we force people to make

Productivity is ultimately an aggregate record of millions of smaller decisions, so we must ask what behaviour our institutions encourage.
Canada deliberately recruits highly educated workers because we believe their skills will strengthen the economy, and then those workers often encounter a second system after they arrive, writes Akolisa Ufodike. Pexels photograph by cottonbro studio
Opinion
BY AKOLISA UFODIKE
October 21, 2026

This year’s Nobel Prize in economics offers Canada a timely lesson about its productivity problem.

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