8 Competitiveness measures will look beyond taxes fter more than a year of mounting anxiety in Canada about the competitive threat from U.S. corporate Businesses say Atax cuts, the federal government’s Fall Economic “ red tape is a bigger Statement won praise from business leaders for the suite problem than taxes of tax measures it contained, such as accelerated capital for competitiveness expensing. That, coupled with the fact Canada’s corporate ” tax rates remain the third-lowest in the G7, should help Canada’s competitive landscape in 2019. But competitiveness is not all about taxation, and improvements don’t always have to cut drastically into government revenues. Inefficient government bureaucracy ranks above tax rates as a “problematic factor for doing busi- ness” in Canada, according to the World Economic Forum. Consider the aver- age time it takes to deal with construction permits: at 250 days, according to World Bank data, the process takes longer than in any other G7 country, and almost three times as long as in the U.S. The seemingly endless process to get new oil pipelines built to alleviate Canada’s oil transportation bottlenecks is another example. RBC Economics Research | Navigating 2019 - 9 big insights for the year ahead | January 2019 19