Ticket rage: a national solution

It is so nice to see the backlash against Ticketmaster’s monopolistic practices. Two class action suits have been filed in Canada over the past weeks, and south of the border anti-trust alarm bells are ringing due to Ticketmaster’s proposed merger with Live Nation. Tickets sales have become something close to a natural monopoly, and as such should either have their […]

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Relentless Self-Promotion: Michael Coren Show

I just returned from the Steelworker Mecca of Hamilton-Burlington, where the Michael Coren Show is taped. It will be broadcast at 8pm tonight through the Crossroads Television System (CTS) on cable in Ontario and Alberta, and on satellite across Canada. Sarah Blackstock of the Income Security Advocacy Centre and I squared off with two Kevins, one from the Canadian Taxpayers […]

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Obama’s Bank Bail Out

Martin Wolf of the Financial Times has written a pretty scathing critique of the new US Administation’s overhaul of the TARP program.  I am increasingly convinced by Duncan Cameron’s  argument that – in the US at least – the best way out is to nationalize the banks, run them as a public utility, and compensate the shareholders only if there […]

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The Trade Deficit and Buy Canadian Policy

A standard objection to the Buy Canadian policy proposed yesterday by Canada’s largest industrial unions was that Canada enjoys a trade surplus. Such a policy would allegedly prompt foreign retaliation, erasing our current trade surplus and its contribution to aggregate demand in Canada. This morning, Statistics Canada reported that we actually ran a merchandise trade deficit in December, the first […]

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A hat tip from Maclean’s

A year after crunching the numbers and coming to the conclusion that an economic downturn spelled deficits, I got this hat tip in Maclean’s: It’s true that there was no consensus forecast, through most of last year, that saw Canada suffering a deep recession in 2009, and a return to staggering deficits in Ottawa. However, it’s false to suggest that […]

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Trading on Thin Ice

It is amazing to see the charged responses to the idea of a made-in-Canada policy for procurement related to infrastructure stimulus spending. Perhaps it is just that all economists are supposed to accept free trade as the One True Policy. But what I am seeing are largely moral arguments for free trade in the abstract rather than an examination of […]

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Peeking over the Rockies

For those who love BC (and who doesn’t?), there is a new blog for you. The CCPA has started The Lead-Up, a blog about BC public policy with coverage of next week’s provincial budget, and all the political follies one might hope for with an election three months away and an economy in free-fall. A large swath of our BC […]

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The Ascent of Reform-man

Andrew Coyne blogs a summary of how the Conservatives have abandoned their principles to get and stay in power. Of course, Coyne views this sell-out with derision; I see it with a smile and great thanks, but with concern that they will rediscover those lost “principles” should a majority somehow be achieved. Despite the perspective it reads as a nice […]

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Three Cheers for Maloway

Canadian airlines are squealing that MP Jim Maloway’s proposed “Air passenger bill of rights” would “send airfares soaring and throw flights into chaos.” What strikes me is that American airlines already provide much of what Maloway suggests. They frequently over-book flights, but always offer free flights to induce passengers to volunteer to be bumped. In these cases and other instances […]

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Steelworkers and Auto Workers, Together at Last

The heads of Canada’s largest industrial unions just presented the following appeal to use government procurement policy to maintain and create Canadian jobs. UPDATE: It seems that Peggy Nash (from CAW) and I (from USW) will be taking calls about Buy America and Buy Canadian policies on CP24, a Toronto news TV station, between 9pm and 10pm on Wednesday. UPDATE (Feb. […]

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January marks highest monthly employment decline on record

Today’s Statistics Canada release of January employment numbers reveals staggering job losses: Employment fell by 129,000 in January (-0.8%), almost all in full time, pushing the unemployment rate up 0.6 percentage points to 7.2%. This drop in employment exceeds any monthly decline during the previous economic downturns of the 1980s and 1990s. More jobs were lost in January than in […]

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Who Saved Canadian Steel?

International Trade Minister Stockwell Day is claiming credit for an amendment to the US stimulus bill affirming that its Buy America provisions will be “applied in a manner consistent with US obligations under international agreements.” Canada tops the list of countries to which the US has such obligations. However, Day and his colleagues demanded the complete removal of Buy America […]

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The folly of balanced budget legislation

In a column in The Tyee, former BC Socred cabinet minister Will McMartin reviews the ups and downs of BC’s three strikes at balanced budget legislation. Each time this legislation has been repealed, although when the latest BC legislation is “amended” next week it will mark the first time this has been done by the same government and premier that […]

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BC outlook: this is gonna hurt

Housing has been one of the major drivers of the BC economy in recent years. Low interest rates led to rising home prices and a psychology of “must get in before being locked out forever”; leading a housing bubble that had everyone in town swapping jaw dropping stories of bidding wars and outrageous prices paid. The economic driver was not […]

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Ignatieff’s Third Motive

I admit to not keeping up with all of the progressive reaction to the new Liberal-Conservative coalition. But among mainstream political pundits, there seem to be two main explanations for Igantieff’s decision to not substantively amend the budget. First, he was unwilling to go through with the progressive coalition or risk an election, so he tried to sound tough without proposing […]

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Bailouts and Bay St

In his latest rabble.ca column Duncan Cameron takes on a piece of the federal budget that got little play in the media: Budget 2009 and the Bay St. bailout Duncan Cameron Why did the Liberals support the Conservative budget when the analysis is clear: the Finance Minister ignored the vulnerable, punished women, did not provide a serious stimulus to a […]

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BC blinks on running a deficit

Now that the federal budget is over, I’ve been girding myself for the Feb 17 BC budget. My concern to date has been bold statements from both parties that they would never run a deficit, and that therefore we were in for a rerun of last Fall’s federal election where all parties kowtowed to the alter of fiscal conservatism. BC’s […]

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American Steel

Alarmist media reports on “Buy America” rules for steel used in US public infrastructure projects have emphasized the value of Canadian steel exports allegedly threatened, but have largely ignored the similar value of American steel imported by Canada. In fact, in the most recent month for which data is available (November 2008), Canada bought more steel from the US than […]

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