President of the Treasury Board Anita Anand speaks during a news conference, Tuesday, October 24, 2023 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Anita Anand, President of Treasury Board, said Tuesday she will establish a working group to study Canada’s productivity and remove regulatory barriers.

Anand will “immediately set up a working group to examine productivity and inform the government’s economic plan,” her office said in a statement. “The working group will address barriers to achieving greater efficiencies for businesses so we can help increase productivity across the country.”

During a press conference in Halifax, N.S., where the government Liberal Party is wrapping up a cabinet retreat, Anand said the working group will study productivity in the public and private sectors, and the work will begin “very soon, within the next few weeks.” The purpose of the working group, according to the statement, is to strengthen the economy and reduce the cost of living for Canadians.

The topic of declining productivity has taken center stage over the past several months among senior officials and economists. Carolyn Rogers, senior deputy governor at the Bank of Canada said over the past four decades, the country has slipped “significantly” compared with some other countries.

“Relative to the United States, among G7 countries we are now second only to Italy when it comes to productivity decline,” Rogers said in a March speech, adding that Canada’s investment levels in machinery, equipment and intellectual property have decreased over the past decade, and are behind where they need to be.

Anand said she and Dominic LeBlanc, minister of intergovernmental affairs, will take steps to remove interprovincial trade barriers. They will meet with the first ministers at the Committee for Internal Trade next month. And Anand will travel to Washington next week to speak with officials there about reducing barriers to cross-border trade.

In the press conference, Anand said there are about 300,000 employees in the public sector, “and we want to make sure that we're addressing concerns there. We will be working with unions to do that.”