The building trades, transportation, agriculture, energy, and manufacturing will all be affected A newly public federal document reveals that more than 2.7 million jobs across Canada can expect a “significant disruption” as a result of Ottawa’s Just Transition plan to reduce emissions. Ironically, it comes at the same time as new analysis showing that world…
Pandemic restrictions dealt the sector a heavy blow
Consumers usually realize fairly quickly just how important the manufacturing sector is when they stare at empty shelves while shopping. In some cases, being confronted with an empty shelf can lead to hysteria and panic, leading to irrational behaviour. Most consumers, pre-pandemic, never really had much cause to be concerned about how the Canadian manufacturing…
Manufactures atom-scale circuits that are faster and use far less energy
The discovery that silicon could be used to make transistors smaller and more efficient in the late 1950s led to the invention of the integrated circuit – the basis for computers, cellphones and just about every other electrical device in use today – and signalled the dawn of the largest, most complex industry history has…
Recognizes that manufacturing - including farmers - are the anchor to the entire food supply chain
A new coalition led by the Retail Council of Canada (RCC) has presented a roadmap to peace within the food industry. It’s a positive step forward for the food production industry and consumers. For years, grocers have unilaterally imposed fees on their suppliers, with questionable excuses. While grocers maintained a hard line to protect margins,…
A new study’s calculations indicate particular hardship for the manufacturing sector based largely in southwestern Ontario
By Elmira Aliakbari and Jason Clemens The Fraser Institute As Ontarians in the southwestern region are well aware, the last 15 years have not been kind economically. In many ways, this part of the province never recovered from the 2008-09 recession. Now, the federal government’s plan to increase its carbon tax to $170 per tonne…A cautionary tale about how higher energy prices lower competitiveness and damage economic prosperity
By Elmira Aliakbari and Jason Clemens The Fraser Institute Ontarians understand the personal costs of increased electricity prices caused largely by the province’s Green Energy Act. But the effect on Ontario’s competitiveness, particularly in manufacturing, has been largely ignored even though the costs continue to be substantial. The Green Energy Act mandated and subsidized renewable…
While robots replace human workers on the factory floor, better-paid jobs are created to design, build and maintain the robots
The robots are coming, the robots are coming! They may not be an unstoppable evil army ready to take over the world as in a bad sci-fi movie, but they’re definitely making headway on factory assembly lines and increasingly in other industries. A United Kingdom research firm, Oxford Economics, did a study that covered seven…
The province’s manufacturing sector may find itself even less competitive soon due to developments in the United States
How do you kill 75,000 jobs and turn your valuable location into a disadvantage? If you’re the Ontario government, you: start a transition to renewable energy driven by politicians without any cost-benefit analyses; when people with expertise in the energy and power sectors give advice on technical issues – for example, how much duplicate power…
Ontario electricity rates for industry are among highest in North America, thanks to a series of bad government policy decisions
By Ross McKitrick and Elmira Aliakbari The Fraser Institute Ontario manufacturers are feeling the pinch from high electricity prices. But how high are the province’s industrial electricity rates relative to other jurisdictions? Ontario has the highest residential electricity costs of all Canadian provinces. Ontario electricity prices increased twice as fast as the national average over the past…
The province’s high electricity prices – driven by wrong-headed policies – are responsible for a staggering 75,000 manufacturing job losses
By Ross McKitrick and Elmira Aliakbari The Fraser Institute Soaring electricity costs have devastated Ontario's manufacturing sector. In the 1990s and into the 2000s, Ontario was a low-electricity-cost jurisdiction. This competitive advantage helped attract business and foster economic growth in the province. But in recent years, due largely to the inefficiencies of the Green Energy Act (2009),…