Will take a major entrepreneurial push to fix, says Michael Katchen
Part of the problem is an overreliance on a handful of industries, Katchen said, pointing to the resource sector.
“I think Canada’s problem is we do two things: We pull things out of the ground and we finance pulling things out of the ground,” Katchen said at a Toronto conference hosted by technology publication The Logic. “And frankly, we don’t do it all that well all the time. And I think the challenge is, if that’s the story we tell ourselves in 20 years, we’re in deep trouble.”
“If it was a simple problem, we would’ve solved it by now,” Macklem said at the same Toronto event. “It’s a multifaceted problem and it’s going to take a concerted effort by businesses, by governments, by the academic community, to put their heads together, set some priorities and work their way through it.”
Macklem added that Canada has world-leading businesses in nearly every sector that are investing and innovating. “The issue is we just don’t have enough of them.”