The Progressive Economics Forum

 Last Thursday I was at an event on the issue of rising income inequality, sponsored by Canada 2020. It featured one of the authors of the recent OECD report on inequality, who highlighted the “skills biased technological change or SBT ” hypothesis so favoured by mainstream economists who desperately avoid discussion of inequality as a [...]

Here’s a guest post from Ben Gillies, a political economy grad from the University of Manitoba. Canadians Must Not Let Dubious Political Tactics Turn Us Off Politics Altogether By Benjamin Gillies Last week, the Conservatives admitted their party was behind a rash of phone calls to Liberal Irwin Cotler’s federal riding in Montreal, in which [...]

Pollsters tell us that Ontario’s New Democrats may double their seat total in next month’s provincial election. It’s also entirely conceivable that they could be part of a coalition government at Queen’s Park. But what’s actually in the party’s election platform? One central feature of the NDP’s proposals is to implement a tax credit for companies that hire new workers. The tax [...]

Last March, Keith Dunne and I wrote an opinion piece on Danny Williams’ post-secondary education (PSE) legacy in Newfoundland and Labrador. Among other things, we pointed out that average undergraduate tuition fees (for domestic students) in Newfoundland and Labrador are $2,624/yr., compared with $5,138 for Canada as a whole and $6,307 in Ontario. With a provincial election slated to take [...]

My wife and I (and our dog Charlie) attended Jack Layton’s memorial service in downtown Toronto yesterday along with thousands of other mourners. It was a moving, emotional, soulful and remarkable ceremony, a testament to a fabulous human being’s honourable political legacy and his fundamental decency as a person. It’s tragic that just when Jack [...]

Yesterday’s Jeffrey Simpson column was entitled, “Walking the Line on Corporate Tax Cuts.” Incredibly, he walks the narrow 1.5% line between the Liberal and NDP proposals. To his credit, Simpson takes an open-minded look at the evidence, which indicates “no discernible links” from corporate taxes to employment or investment. On this basis, he accepts the [...]

A quick and easy way to get a very bad bad headache is to attempt to compare and contrast the fiscal plans attached to the major party platforms. But they throw some light on the real priorities of the parties, and the real choices in play in the election. One thing the Conservatives, Liberals and [...]

Jack Layton unveiled the NDP’s policy platform today.  Among other things, it promises to eliminate the deficit (i.e. balance the federal budget) within four years.  I’m not sure it should. Several years back, I had the opportunity to take a directed reading course from John Smithin.  In addition to being a long-time member of the [...]

(I have also posted this to the new CCPA election blog which plans to run fairly short non technical pieces over the next month.)   Harper’s key framing argument is that a stable majority is needed to maintain an economic recovery which would be derailed by a coalition. I find this more than a little [...]

Rob Ford, a belligerent right-wing serial liar with a proclivity for infantile temper tantrums and drunkenness, was elected mayor of Toronto this past week. Handily. This was after seven years of competent and scandal-free leadership by an NDP mayor, David Miller. The man Miller endorsed to replace him was a long-time NDP councilor renowned for [...]

But you wouldn’t know it if you listened to the message that the BC Liberals have been sending in this provincial election campaign. Instead of discussing the merits of his party’s proposed economic recovery policy, the incumbent Premier prefers to tell British Columbians that responsible economic stewardship involves keeping the business sector happy and anything [...]

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 [...]

Canadian Labour Congress Statement Why We Need a Coalition Government to Deal with the Economic Crisis. The Economic and Fiscal Update released by Finance Minister Flaherty on November 27, 2008 demonstrates that the Conservative government has no intention of seriously dealing with the global economic crisis and the prospect of fast rising unemployment. The recent [...]

I wasn’t originally planning to write a longer analysis and critique of Flaherty’s fiscal and economic statement beyond our immediate response because, like most people, I expected it would at least show some reasonable recognition of the problem and at least the framework for a stimulus program (besides, I had young children to pick up [...]

There’s a lot of talk on the net and in the media right about how to “unite the left” post election, with Murray Dobbin, many folks at rabble.ca and a few others talking about the need for an immediate coalition of the opposition parties to defeat the Conservatives. The project of some immediate union of [...]