U.S. President Calvin Coolidge said in 1925 that “The chief business of the American people is business,” a line often mis-quoted as “The business of America is business.” No Canadian prime minister has ever dared be so pro-business. The business of Canada, they’ve argued, is getting along with one another or showing the world diversity works or being self-consciously non-American in North America.
But the wise ones have understood that doing whatever the business of Canada is requires doing plain old business well, too. Whatever your social goal is, unless it’s anti-materialism, having higher incomes helps. As Coolidge said in the same speech in 1925: “The accumulation of wealth means the multiplication of schools, the increase of knowledge, the dissemination of intelligence, the encouragement of science, the broadening of outlook, the expansion of liberties, the widening of culture. Of course, the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence. But we are compelled to recognize it as a means to well nigh every desirable achievement.”
Given the social importance of business, it’s interesting to see where Canada ranks in the World Bank’s latest assessment of countries’ friendliness to business, which came out this week.
The good news: In the “Ease of Doing Business” index we rank 14th among 189 countries, just behind Australia and just ahead of Germany, which is pretty good company. Singapore and New Zealand are Number 1 and 2, the U.S. is 7th. Also, we’ve moved up a step this year.
On the other hand, our moving up isn’t actually our own doing. 122 countries overall made reforms last year that increased the ease of doing business inside their borders. But we didn’t. Which makes this the second year in a row in which we haven’t made any pro-business changes that show up in the index. Other countries are getting smarter in their approach to business. We’re apparently happy with the status quo.
As with most such indexes, the devil but also the interesting bits, is in the details.
Among our strengths are:
Where we can improve:
Canada is a big, federal country and the World Bank didn’t sample all our provinces. In fact, the data for Canada reflect a CBC-style view of the country: they’re for Toronto only.
Things may be better outside Ontario. But there was lots of talk during the recent election campaign about how the entire country’s economic performance has been disappointing over the last few years. If we want to do better, making things easier for business is bound to be part of the solution. Whether you’re content to let business keep the money it has earned or whether you want to use it to further whatever you believe the real business of Canada to be, making economic activity easier can only help.