Frank Stronach

Is Canada still a business-friendly country?

December 13, 2022

When it comes to doing business, Canada may not be as friendly as it once was. Thirty or forty years ago, whenever my company opened a new manufacturing facility or R&D centre in southern Ontario, municipalities would bend over backwards to help us — offering everything from widening the road to installing new traffic lights. In the U.S., job-hungry local and state governments would go even further, promising major tax incentives and free land if we chose to locate there. But the business-friendly environment that existed in Canada years ago has largely vanished. Instead, businesses looking to open a store or factory get slapped with piles of paperwork and never-ending fees. I’ve been trying to get a business operation up

Bringing back manufacturing jobs the key to Canada’s economic future

May 30, 2023

Canada used to be a strong manufacturing nation. Some of our biggest and best known companies were manufacturing powerhouses like Massey-Harris and Northern Telecom. We made everything from tractors and trains to automobiles and airplanes. We also had our own homegrown manufacturers like Inglis and Electrohome that built made-in-Canada washing machines and TVs. One of the first jobs I had when I immigrated to Canada as a young toolmaker was working in a factory that produced parts for the ill-fated Avro Arrow, which at the time was the world’s fastest fighter jet. But Canada hardly ever makes world-leading, technologically advanced products anymore. One of the reasons for this is that we no longer have the pool of skilled technical trade

Government bureaucracy is the cholesterol clogging up the economy

July 11, 2023

Back in the early 1980s, when commercial computers first came onto the market, they were sold with a big promise: they could do the work of an entire floor of employees in a typical office building and could dramatically decrease the amount of paperwork and paper filing for businesses and organizations. But it never happened. If anything, the piles of paperwork, government forms and compliance reports that needed to be filled out increased enormously — and with it, so too did the size of our bureaucracy. As a result, today you see hundreds and hundreds more office buildings staffed with more people who devote a large chunk of each workday to regulation compliance requests. The facts bear this out: government

The core issues facing Canada in 2023

January 3, 2023

For many of us, the start of a new year focuses our minds on goals and plans for the future. It’s a time for a fresh start, a time when we get around to tackling projects that we keep putting off even though we know they’re important for our financial or personal wellbeing. That same mindset should be adopted by our government as well. With the worst of the pandemic firmly behind us, now is the time to finally start solving some of the key problems that have hobbled our economy and held back our potential as a country. But where do we begin? We’re confronted by a number of seemingly insurmountable problems: Skyrocketing debt. Falling living standards. A country

Bringing back manufacturing jobs the key to Canada’s economic future

May 30, 2023

To support small businesses, exempt them from corporate income tax

September 6, 2023

In today’s highly competitive global economy, countries fight tooth and nail for corporate investments, promising everything from tax breaks to subsidies. Why? Because these investments bring jobs, and jobs have become one of the world’s most precious commodities. Article contentCanada’s unemployment rate rose to 5.5 per cent in July, according to Statistics Canada — the highest it’s been since February 2022. That’s more than one million people looking for work. When I was CEO of Magna, whenever we opened factories in small towns across Southern Ontario, it usually meant hundreds of new jobs and a big boost to the local economy. But most jobs in Canada don’t come from big corporations — they come from small businesses. According to statistics