Our Focus Areas
The Productivity Project examines how human capital can drive Canada’s productivity.
Canada’s productivity challenge is not only about technology, investment, or firm performance. It is also about whether people can build, apply, renew, and demonstrate the capabilities needed in a changing economy.
Our work focuses on the systems that connect learning to work, capability to opportunity, and human potential to economic value. We study how individuals, employers, education providers, credentialing bodies, policymakers, and regional partners shape the conditions under which people contribute productively across their careers.
At the centre of the Project is one question:
How can human capital drive Canada’s productivity?
To answer it, our research is organized around six focus areas.
Human Capital & Productivity
Productivity begins with people. This focus area examines how education, skills, experience, judgment, learning, and workplace capability shape Canada’s economic performance. It asks why high levels of educational attainment do not automatically translate into stronger productivity, and what systems are needed to close that gap.
Six Focus Areas
Entry-Level Work and Career Pathways
Entry-level jobs have historically helped people convert education into experience, judgment, networks, and workplace capability. This focus area examines how those pathways are changing, why early-career opportunities are weakening, and what this means for productivity, equity, and long-term talent development.
Recognition and Open Learning Systems
Much of what people know and can do is developed outside traditional credentials. This focus area explores how certified, non-certified, informal, experiential, and workplace-based learning can be better recognized, trusted, and connected to labour-market valu
Learning, Skills, Capability Development
Canada needs learning systems that prepare people not only for their first job, but for continuous adaptation across a working life. This focus area explores how people develop durable knowledge, transferable skills, adaptive capability, and the confidence to apply learning in changing contexts.
Labour-Market Disruption
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Regional Human Capital Systems
Human capital is developed through systems, not isolated programs. This focus area examines how governments, employers, learning providers, credentialing bodies, community partners, and regional institutions can coordinate more effectively to build adaptive, future-ready human capital systems.