INVESTMENT INFLOWS HAVE PLUMMETED, YET GOVERNMENTS KEEP PILING ON.

trend. Private investment intentions, according to Statistics Canada, dropped 12 per cent in 2016 and a further 1.6 per cent in 2017. While resource-sector investment has dropped by 27 per cent since 2015, investment in manufacturing has fallen by 19 per cent and in trade by five per cent. Some private investment did grow, such as in finance, real estate and utilities, but overall private investment is sorely lacking.

Much of this is consistent with the challenge Canada has faced in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) since 2014. From 2010 to 2015, foreign direct inflows into Canada were equal to 2.8 per cent of GDP, better than large countries like the U.K. (1.9 per cent) and the U.S. (1.3 per cent), although still less resilient than our resource-based cousin, Australia (3.1 per cent), as well as the Netherlands on rising protectionism, lists Canada as one of the most discriminatory countries against foreign direct investment. We are not as protective as China, India and Saudi Arabia. But Colombia, Israel, Peru and the Ukraine are all more welcoming.

Meanwhile, the World Bank has rated Canada as having a sub-par investment climate for the time it takes here to gain a building permit, the lengthiness of our legal processes and our inability to move goods internationally, with Canada scoring worse than many Third World countries.

Is this a surprise? Building an urban commercial warehouse takes ages in Canada. Getting permission to construct housing in supply-starved Vancouver and Toronto can be as slow as molasses. Approvals for wind, solar and petroleumdrilling sites in Alberta are