The Financial Post reports in its Thursday edition that in her speech on Tuesday, Bank of Canada senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers mentioned it is time to "break" the emergency glass regarding the structural decline in Canadian productivity. The Post's guest columnist Atakan Bakiskan writes that real output per hour worked in Canada has declined in 12 of the past 14 quarters and is now back to where it was in the fourth quarter of 2019. What is more concerning is the productivity slump from prepandemic levels is not due to a handful of industries, but is quite widespread across goods-producing sectors -- with the exception of agriculture, forestry and fishing. For some perspective, on a per-hour basis, an average worker in Canada produces about 70 per cent of the output of a worker in the United States (down from 88 per cent in 1984). Although labour composition (workers' skills) and a lack of competition in the market are behind Canada's poor productivity performance, the major problem remains the incredibly weak capex investment (that is, capital intensity). On a volume basis, Canada has had the same level of investment in machinery, equipment and intellectual property for almost the past two decades.