DR. JAYSON MYERS President   Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters

Biography

Panelist Perspective

Biography

Jayson Myers is the President of Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, Canada’s largest industry and trade association. He is also the Chair of the Canadian Manufacturing Coalition, a coalition of more than 43 industry associations that have come together to speak with a common voice on priority issues for Canada’s Manufacturing sector.

Mr. Myers is a well-known economic commentator, and is widely published in the fields of Canadian and international economics, technological and industrial change. As CME’s Chief Economist, he led the association’s Manufacturing 20/20 initiative, the largest cross-country consultation ever convened by Canada’s business community on the future of manufacturing in Canada. He has been recognized by consulting firm Watson Wyatt as the most accurate economic forecaster in Canada.

Mr. Myers sits on special advisory councils to the Minister for International Trade, the Minister of Industry, and the Canadian Border Services Agency.  He is cochair of the Work & Learning Knowledge Centre of the Canadian Council on Learning. He is Vice Chair of both the Ontario Manufacturing Council and the Great Lakes Manufacturing Council.

Mr. Myers studied at Queen's University, Kingston and the University of British Columbia in Canada, and at the London School of Economics and Oxford University in the United Kingdom. He has held appointments as a research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford and a lecturer in international studies at Warwick University, also in the U.K. He is a consultant on Canadian and international business affairs for Oxford Analytica, an international consulting group based at Oxford University.

Panelist Perspective

Mr. Myers will serve as a panelist for the "Globalization and Trade" Town Hall for the Manufacturing Discipline.

Canada and the United States make things together.  We solve problems together.  We face the same economic challenges.  And, similar economic opportunities are open to manufacturers in both countries.

Manufacturing is a critical sector of the Canadian economy, but it is also a highly integrated sector within the North American economy.  Trade itself – measuring imports and exports – does not really capture the true economic relationship between Canada and the United States with respect to the highly integrated supply chains and industrial markets that exist between our two countries – the largest trading partners in the world.  Notions of trade also do not capture the common competitive challenges and business opportunities that exist for North American manufacturers in today’s global economy. 

Globalization means that manufacturers in both the United States and Canada have to focus more than ever on the specialized value they bring to customers if they are to escape the commodity trap of falling prices and increasing competition.  The future of our common manufacturing base depends on specialization, innovation, new technologies, and the capabilities of a highly qualified workforce.

We need to develop a common North American competitiveness agenda to meet the challenges and take advantage of the business opportunities in a global economy.  And, we need new forms of policy coordination between governments in order to solve the common problems that North American manufacturers will face in the future.