Latest news with #StevenGloberman
Cision Canada
2 days ago
- Business
- Cision Canada
Fraser Institute News Release: AI can help mitigate shrinking labour force by increasing productivity of existing workers and adding new ones
VANCOUVER, BC, June 10, 2025 /CNW/ - As Canada's labour force shrinks due to aging and slowing rates of immigration, artificial intelligence (AI) can help by increasing the number of available workers and improving worker productivity, finds a new study published today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank. "While there's a common perception that AI will eventually lead to mass unemployment, it actually opens the door to the labour market for people who may have been on the outside looking in," said Morley Gunderson, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Toronto and author of Can AI Mitigate Our Labour Force Problems? For example, AI can facilitate more effective job-matching between employers and job seekers including retirees who want to return to work, students who want part-time jobs, and new immigrants. AI can also improve employment prospects for people with disabilities by equipping employees with assistive technologies (screen readers, speech recognition software, etc.) and helping make driverless vehicles, "smart" wheelchairs and other AI-powered resources more widely available. At the same time, AI can help increase productivity growth, which has stagnated in Canada. For example, AI can help connect small and dispersed geographical markets with larger commercial centres, facilitate trade (within Canada and internationally), help small firms grow, and increase the ability of scientists and engineers to develop innovations that fuel productivity growth. "Rather than unduly fearing AI, Canadians should welcome the promise of AI to increase our ability to produce goods and services and improve our living standards," said Steven Globerman, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute. The Fraser Institute is an independent Canadian public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax and ties to a global network of think-tanks in 87 countries. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for Canadians, their families and future generations by studying, measuring and broadly communicating the effects of government policies, entrepreneurship and choice on their well-being. To protect the Institute's independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research. Visit SOURCE The Fraser Institute
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion: Trump's war on property, legal rights may backfire to Canada's benefit
By Steven Globerman To the extent that the Trump administration has provided any rationale for its trade war, with its dramatic twists and turns, it is that United States tariffs will encourage increased capital investment in the U.S., particularly in manufacturing, create jobs and generate more tax revenue. To be sure, Donald Trump's tariffs will encourage some foreign companies to relocate production to America, especially companies that would struggle to sell their exports at higher tariff-induced prices in the U.S., and also have some flexibility to rearrange their supply chains. In effect, these companies will hurdle Trump's tariff wall by expanding production and distribution facilities stateside. In the long run, however, it's likely that Trump's tariffs and his other recent policies will ultimately discourage both foreign and domestic investment in the U.S., hurt U.S. economic growth and job creation, and reduce personal and corporate tax revenues. In other words, Trump's policies will backfire. The fundamental problem is the Trump administration's increasing contempt for legal contracts and private property rights. Its tariffs unilaterally and illegally violate the Canada-United States-Mexico Trade Agreement (CUSMA), indirectly weakening the property rights of businesses that made major investments to structure their operations in accordance with CUSMA. The tariffs also arguably violate the constitutional rights of U.S. business owners seeking to profit from their investments — although Trump's claim that the tariffs are needed to address a national security emergency may make it difficult for U.S. businesses to win a legal challenge against them. The fact that a U.S. administration would attack property rights, and try to limit businesses' recourse to legally protect their rights, might be the most profound and longest lasting legacy of Trump's trade war. It's also a stark repudiation of the small government/strong property rights tradition of the Republican Party. The Trump administration is also undermining the rule of law in the U.S. by threatening to impeach federal judges who rule in favour of legal challenges to specific administration policies such as firing federal employees. Needless to say, a strong and reliable property rights regime relies on an independent judiciary. The Trump administration has also used executive actions to punish U.S. law firms that worked for Democratic Party candidates or on court cases where Trump was a defendant. These actions include stripping security clearances from lawyers working for the firms and barring the firms themselves from doing any legal work for the government. Trump's attempt to intimidate the U.S. legal profession into denying representation to clients who want to challenge his possibly illegal actions further undermines an already declining confidence in the U.S. legal system's ability to protect the property rights of businesses and individuals. Of the various institutions that make a jurisdiction attractive to investors, none are more important than a government that promotes and respects property rights and an independent judiciary that protects and enforces them. Live Q&A: The election, the trade war and your personal finances Opinion: What to do if Trump doesn't back off on Canada tariffs As the Trump administration increasingly threatens private property rights and judicial independence, it will continue to sow uncertainty, which comes with a clear economic cost. Because of Trump's policies, well-governed countries like Canada will attract an increasing share of business investment that would otherwise have gone to the U.S. Trade wars hurt all parties, but where investment is concerned, Trump's policies may backfire badly. Steven Globerman is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Liberal government's high immigration policy created housing crisis: report
The federal Liberal government is belatedly trying to fix a housing affordability crisis it created though immigration policies which caused population growth to far exceed Canada's capacity to build new homes to accommodate it, according to a new Fraser Institute study. 'Despite unprecedented levels of immigration-driven population growth following the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada has failed to ramp up homebuilding sufficiently to meet housing demand,' said Steven Globerman, co-author of the study, 'The Crisis in Housing Affordability: Population Growth and Housing Starts 1972-2024.' 'Unless there is a substantial acceleration in homebuilding, a slowdown in population growth, or both, Canada's housing affordability crisis is unlikely to improve.' The study by the fiscally conservative think tank reported Canada's population grew by a record 1.23 million new residents in 2023 alone, driven almost entirely by immigration and more than double the pre-pandemic record set in 2019. In 2023, Canada added 5.1 new residents for every new housing unit started, the highest ratio for any year of the study's timeframe, from 1972 to 2024, and far above the average rate of 1.9 residents for every new housing unit started during the study period. From 2021 to 2024, the study reported, Canada's population increased by an average of 859,473 people per year while only 254,670 new housing units were started annually. By comparison, almost as many new housing units were built from 1972 to 1979, an average of 239,458 per year, while Canada's population was growing by only 279,975 people annually. The result of the Liberal government's high immigration policies has exacerbated a chronic housing shortage across Canada. 'The evidence is clear — population growth has been outpacing housing construction for decades, with predictable results,' Globerman said, noting the national trend is broadly mirrored across the provinces. The study cited research by the Bank of Canada showing that housing affordability — typically measured as median shelter costs compared to median disposable income — remains near its least affordable level since the early 1990s. In addition, the study reported that 'Canada has the lowest number of dwellings per inhabitant in the G7 and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation warns that the current rate of homebuilding is insufficient to improve housing and rental affordability.' While not addressed in the Fraser Institute study, the Liberal government ignored warnings from its own public servants in 2022 that the big hikes in immigration targets the government was going ahead with would increase the cost of housing and put added pressure on already beleaguered public services like health care. Documents obtained by The Canadian Press through an access-to-information request explicitly warned the Trudeau government in advance that: 'In Canada, population growth has exceeded the growth in available housing units. As the federal authority charged with managing immigration, Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada policy-makers must understand the misalignment between population growth and housing supply, and how permanent and temporary immigration shapes population growth.' Despite that, the Liberal government went ahead with dramatically increasing its annual immigration targets until Trudeau himself admitted the policy was a mistake and reduced its target of admitting 500,000 new permanent residents to Canada annually to 395,000 in 2025, 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027, as well as cutting the number of foreign students and temporary workers admitted to Canada. New Liberal leader Mark Carney has released a multi-billion dollar taxpayer-funded election campaign promise to double the current rate of residential housing construction, to reach 500,000 new homes per year over the next decade.
