Serge Dupont is quoted in the Toronto Star's look at the opportunities Canada has to solve some of the world’s most urgent resource needs right now, and to boost our own prosperity while we’re at it. But, as the Star's Heather Scoffield says, since companies and producers can’t just turn on a dime, and since our infrastructure is insufficient even at the best of times, we have been slow to respond:

“Canada is in a position not only to earn higher prices for its resources but to also be part of the solution to the search by key partners of stable, secure, and responsible supply of energy, food, minerals, and forest products,” writes Serge Dupont, a former senior government official and senior adviser at Bennett Jones, in the firm’s spring economic outlook published on Wednesday.

To make the most out of that position and for the entire country’s economy to benefit, however, the private sector needs to invest more of its earnings on productivity, it says, and the public sector needs to improve its investment in infrastructure. And they need to work hand-in-hand.

Otherwise, all of those extra earnings Canadian companies are pulling in from high commodity prices caused by the Russian invasion will simply sit idle or be redistributed to consumers, it warns.