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As Ben Bernanke pointed out at a speech he gave a few weeks ago, there has been no capital deepening in the U.S. for many years and this is affecting in a negative way the trend in productivity and, in turn, the economy’s natural speed limit.

Yet in Canada, I am detecting growth in the private-sector capital stock and a revival in not just labour, but, more importantly, multi-factor productivity which is critical to living standards and stable economic growth in the future.

Much of this by the way reflects the strength in the Canadian dollar, which has forced cost discipline on the local business sector (unit labour costs are basically flat in the past year) and at the same time helped domestic industry to purchase American-made technology at ever-lower prices.

So while the strong loonie has caused a mass migration of Canadian shoppers to U.S. malls, the currency is the heart of a renaissance underway in business capital spending, which is actually contracting stateside but is one of the strongest components of GDP in Canada.

This is a hidden story, but recall that it was the strong U.S. dollar in the early and mid-1980s that blazed the trail for the surge in competitiveness and revitalization of the Appalachian region at that time.

And what about the political stability “spread”? Stephen Harper is the CEO for the next three years at the least. In the U.S., we have the same political configuration that has brought us the weakest recovery on record, endless rancour and divisiveness, and the same central bank that has constantly pursued a policy of financial repression for its citizenry.

At the end of the evening at the Consul General, I was inundated with questions on Canada from the crowd. The last time I received so many business cards was when Barack Obama was elected the first time around.

David Rosenberg is chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates Inc. and author of the daily economic report, Breakfast with Dave. He is one of FP Magazine’s 25 Most Influential People in Canada.