LILLEY: Five moves Carney could make to unleash Canada's economy

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Canada has immense potential that we haven’t been realizing over the past decade. Mark Carney’s new government has promised to make changes, but is going slower than what we need.

If we aren’t getting a deal with Donald Trump to lift tariffs any time soon, and it appears we’re not, then we need to boost our economic growth elsewhere to compensate.

Here are five key suggestions, with concrete examples of things we could be doing to truly unleash Canada’s economy.

Truly develop our resources

Canada has an unrivalled abundance of energy, minerals, forests, and farmland. But thanks to endless delays, activist interference, and political cowardice, more than $670 billion in resource projects have been cancelled or stalled since 2015.

That’s a big number and may seem distant to most, but what it means is cancelled projects, delayed projects, and lost jobs and opportunity.

The prime minister has promised to support projects of national importance, perhaps including pipelines, but 108 days after his election, almost four months later, we don’t have a sense of what those projects are. To get them moving, Carney needs to announce a list of project he will support soon in order to attract investors and get started.

Enbridge and TC Energy have already announced that the bulk of their investment for the next budgetary year is going stateside due to regulatory uncertainty in Canada.

We need to fix that fast.

Get moving on infrastructure

We’ve been talking about northern ports like the Grays Bay Road and Port project or the road to Ontario’s Ring of Fire for years. These projects can’t move ahead without the infrastructure to support them, but too often it has been federal red tape or a lack of interest stopping them.

In passing Bill C-5, the Carney Liberals made it easier for some projects to move ahead, but like with resource development, things are moving too slow. Trump is moving at lightening speed to unleash the American economy, we need to catch up in order to compete.

Make us competitive on taxes

Going back to at least the days of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Canada’s industrial policy has included being competitive with the Americans through lower corporate taxes. As Trump alters the American taxation landscape, we need to keep up, we need to eliminate some taxes, we need to be smarter about how we tax so that we encourage investment and growth.

To accomplish this, the Carney government could implement these two simple measures:

— Eliminate sector-specific taxes such as the 1.5% surtax on banks and life insurance companies, this discourages their investment in Canada.

— Eliminate the capital gains tax for any individual or company that reinvests their profits in Canada.

“This will cause a boom in Canadian investment,” said Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in proposing the elimination of capital gains when funds are reinvested.

“We need to reward investment by letting people who sell one asset and reinvest the money in Canada to do so without capital gains tax.”

Take control of government spending

The Carney government is in a difficult spot. Spending under the Trudeau government was rising at a rate far above inflation and population growth.

The size of the federal bureaucracy grew by 43% under the Trudeau government and no one believes their services are 43% better. Polling shows that most Canadians support cutting the budget and the size of the bureaucracy, so Carney has some leeway with the public which is good.

Still, he’s made many campaign promises and defence spending promises since.

We need spending under control so that we can spend less on things like servicing the debt and more on the programs and ideas Canada needs to get the economy moving.

Establish real Indigenous partnerships

Despite some loud voices, most Indigenous Canadians want to build this country as well, but they also want a stake in our bright future. Move towards real reconciliation with equity ownership in projects that go through or touch on Indigenous lands, don’t fight them, make them partners.

Imagine how quickly things would move if that were the case.

Bottom line

We know what needs to be done in this country to unleash our economy, the question is do we still have the courage to do it?

After a decade of the Trudeau government trying to suffocate Canada’s main industries, many people, including those in government, may be cautious, a little gun shy, and that could include Carney. He shouldn’t be — if Carney wants to be bold, he will have the backing of Canadians including Poilievre, who was essentially telling Carney to steal his ideas last week.

As I’ve been saying since Trump’s inauguration, his plan is about more than tariffs, it’s about changing how the global economy works. To respond to that, we need to change how we operate in Canada and that will take bold ideas.

Let’s stop talking about being bold and do it.

blilley@postmedia.com