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Not long ago, a business could locate in Canada with reasonable prospects of barrier-free access to most of the major markets of the world. Now, even the American border looks more and more like a wall: an investor today will think twice before putting a plant on this side. Much of the blame for that, certainly, can be attached to the Trump administration, but what are we doing to compensate on other fronts?

What, say, of taxes? Much attention has focused on the sharp reduction in U.S. business taxes arising from the recent tax reform: a marginal effective tax rate on capital investment, federal and state combined, of less than 19 per cent, according to calculations by University of Calgary economist Jack Mintz, down from 34.6 per cent. Rather less attention has been paid to the steady rise in the same taxes in Canada, from 17.5 per cent in 2012 to 21 per cent today.

An investor looking at Canada must also reckon with a marginal rate of personal income tax exceeding 50 per cent in much of the country, not only on his own income but those of his top employees. And that’s not including pending increases in Canada Pension Plan levies: not technically taxes, though employers and employees could be forgiven for thinking of them as such, especially when they look at how the CPP investment fund spends their money.

What of government deficits and debt? We’ve grown used to thinking of the federal debt as being under control, but provincial debts have been exploding. At 30 per cent of GDP, net provincial debt is up from 20 per cent a decade ago — this, even before the costs of an aging population have really begun to bite.