John Manley appeared live on BNN Bloomberg to discuss the Bank of Canada's latest rate hike of 50bps. He says that the federal government is in a tough position but needs to slow stimulus growth.
He also spoke about what's needed for business confidence in Canada. John says, "The best stimulus for any economy is business confidence, and business confidence is eroded in an inflationary environment where you don't know where interest rates are going to land, and where you don't know what kind of costs you are going to be facing for your inputs. So getting inflation down is going to be a prerequisite for having a stable and growing economy."
John was asked about what he sees as the top concerns for 2023 for Canadian business leaders, in his role as Senior Advisor at Bennett Jones.
"The biggest concern still is where do I get the talent. Talent is hard to find. You can have the best and most aggressive business plan in the world, you can be very confident in your technology and your product lines and so on, but unless you've got the people to deliver the results, you're going to disappoint. And increasingly, businesses are trying to cope with where do I find the people, how do I retain the people—although retention is mitigating a little bit as the winds of recession start to blow a little bit—so how do we skill-up people in an environment where not everybody's coming to the workplace every day."