‘Wake Up’: Bank CEO Urges Carney to Fight US With Big Tax Cuts

National Bank of Canada’s top executive called on Prime Minister Mark Carney to consider bold tax cuts and deregulation for strategic sectors to boost the country’s productivity and competitiveness.

“We need to have lower taxes than the US for businesses,” Chief Executive Officer Laurent Ferreira said at the Canada Fintech Forum in Montreal on Monday evening. The government should even think about a “zero tax policy” for strategic manufacturing and defense procurement, he said.

Ferreira, who has led Canada’s sixth-largest bank since 2021, told the audience the country’s productivity growth has been weak for a decade. “We need to ...