Unemployment reduction in Canada: Lessons from Japan and Sweden

The active labor market policy has been used to reduce the duration of unemployment in Sweden. The lifetime employment system has been used to lower the incidence of unemployment in Japan. Emulating Japan and Sweden could prove difficult, since their policies reflect and reinforce employment interests that are very different from Canada's. As a result, neither lifetime employment nor active labor market policy is transferable to Canada without major modifications to suit the stakeholder interests of Canadian unions, employers, and employees.