The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that Canada's economy is facing a significant challenge from an underinvestment in employees, which is contributing to stagnating economic growth, falling productivity and a lack of innovation. Guest columnist Jeffrey Doucet writes that this underinvestment not only hurts individual career growth, but also severely affects our competitiveness. In a rapidly changing global economy where skills are the currency of success, Canada cannot afford to fall behind from a lack of investment in employee-training initiatives. While our neighbours in the United States spend on average $954 per employee per year on training, Canadian companies spend just $240. While not the only factor, this does correlate to Canada's deepening decline in its relative standard of living, which has fallen in recent years. Certainly, the pandemic stalled Canada's economy, as it did for countries around the world, but our low productivity growth long predates this. BMO chief economist Douglas Porter notes that our productivity has lagged that of the U.S. for decades, and that gap has increased to the point where our productivity is now actually declining, mainly because of a lack of business investment.