The Canadian Chamber of Commerce (CCC) has identified the Top 10 Barriers to Competitiveness for 2016, a list of key impediments that are preventing Canadian businesses from reaching their full potential and, in turn, Canada from improving its productivity and economic prosperity.

In a fiercely competitive world, business needs more than its own skills to win—it also needs a supportive environment and public policies to encourage competitiveness. This annual list of barriers points to economic hurdles of our own making, self-imposed limits on the growth of Canadian businesses. Through this initiative, the CCC is bringing these barriers to the forefront and is urging all stakeholders to act more swiftly to improve our country’s ability to compete globally.

“Although the policies involved may have started with positive goals, they now hinder business success, and many of the issues on our list were repeated from previous years,” says Perrin Beatty, CCC President and CEO. “We need to act now. We’ve identified a series of improvements that can be put in place rapidly. We ask the government to remove these obstacles before conditions worsen.”

This year’s edition covers several ongoing issues, from internal trade barriers between provinces to the lack of clarity concerning consultations with Aboriginal peoples and our inability to efficiently get resources to world markets. There are a number of new barriers as well, including Canadian businesses’ vulnerability to cyber crime and Canada’s lack of preparedness for the effects of climate change.

“These barriers are of our own making. They are the result of acting wrongly or failing to act at all, but we can eliminate them if we have the will to do so,” Beatty said. “Government can provide the leadership to remove these hurdles. This is the opportunity to take another step towards a Canada that wins.”

The entire report can be seen by clicking HERE.