But the history of industrial economies shows that growth in productivity has actually gone hand in hand with improved overall employment conditions. This is borne out by the experience of countries like Japan in the 1980s and, more recently, the United States and the United Kingdom. That was also our experience in Canada during the 1950s and 1960s.
Canada’s productivity record So how has Canada fared in the productivity department since the 1950s and 1960s? Not all that well, I’m afraid. After a relatively strong showing from the end of the Second World War to the early 1970s, our productivity performance became rather lacklustre.