Canada is facing a national productivity emergency. This country’s economic output per worker, which has been stagnant for decades, took a turn for the worse during the pandemic, declining by 0.6 per cent since 2020. 

Since the turn of the 21^st century, Canada has responded to this slow-growing crisis with familiar policies, modest reforms, and prolonged study. The results are now unmistakable: productivity has stalled and peer economies are pulling away, while Canada confronts stagnant wages, declining competitiveness, and growing economic insecurity. As this country works to build a more resilient national economy and diversify its international trading relationships, it must find a way to raise its lagging productivity now.

As president of one of Canada’s most comprehensive institutions—offering credentials from certificates and apprenticeships to bachelor’s and master’s degrees—I’m left to reflect on higher education’s role in allowing this situation to unfold. More than six in 10 Canadians hold university or college credentials, a rate that’s 22 per cent higher than the OECD average. In the simplest terms, that statistic should mean we’re smarter than everybody else. Educational attainment and rising economic productivity should go hand in hand, but, in Canada’s case, they have not. 

What is now required is not refinement, but resolve. We must have the courage to change decades of policy thinking, and to accept a measured degree of risk in adopting models that have proven effective elsewhere. The greater risk today lies in inaction—in clinging to systems designed for a different, more stable economic era while the global economy is in upheaval.

Business investment in research and development, at 1.81 per cent of GDP, remains well below OECD norms. Firms struggle to adopt new technologies at scale, most notably artificial intelligence, with only 14.5 per cent of Canadian businesses planning to adopt AI in the year ahead. The challenge is not a lack of talent or ideas; it is a misalignment between education, industry, and national economic priorities, reinforced by policy frameworks that reward stability over speed and caution over outcomes.

Other advanced economies have confronted similar challenges and chosen a different path. Countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Finland made deliberate—sometimes difficult—policy decisions to realign education with productivity, industry needs, and applied innovation. 

Central to their success has been the empowerment of strong polytechnic education: institutions explicitly designed to move at the speed of industry, integrate learning with application, and convert knowledge into economic results. These reforms required political courage and a willingness to depart from long-standing assumptions about higher education—and they paid off.

Canada already has this model, but it remains underused.

Polytechnics represent one of the most powerful, proven, and immediately available levers to reverse this country’s productivity decline. Their mandate is distinct and essential: to link theory to practice, align credentials with labour-market demand, accelerate technology adoption, and collaborate directly with industry to solve real problems, generating intellectual property that remains in industry’s hands. Polytechnics are built for responsiveness, relevance, and impact—precisely what Canada’s economy now requires.

To meet this moment, we must be willing to make fundamental policy changes: aligning education more directly with productivity and industry outcomes; accelerating program approvals to match business decision-making timelines; increasing applied research investment; and accepting new models of collaboration between government, industry, and higher education. This will require governments to loosen constraints, tolerate experimentation, and judge success by results rather than precedent.

Productivity growth does not happen by accident. It is built—deliberately—by institutions empowered to serve the national economy. Strengthening and unleashing the full potential of polytechnics is not an education reform at the margins; it is a core economic strategy to raise Canada’s productivity and secure its future in a rapidly changing world.