Backed by a $6-million research grant, the effort is to bring together social scientists from multiple universities and participants from federal institutions (including the Bank of Canada, Finance, Global Affairs and Industry) to boost productivity. Economist Trevor Tombe is to direct the initiative, the first to be funded under a program meant to tie academic research directly to policy changes. (The Logic)

Talking point: Besides yielding scholarship and better policy, the project is intended to train a new generation of academics equipped to study productivity. Until Donald Trump came along, stagnant productivity—the output Canadian enterprises get from labour and other inputs—was widely considered Canada’s most pressing economic problem. In 2024 the University of Calgary launched an effort called “Canada’s Productivity Initiative,” which the new funding supports and expands.