My assessment of today’s Labour Force Survey follows: Manufacturing Crisis Deepens • The loss of a further 31,000 manufacturing jobs in June pushed total manufacturing employment losses to 95,000 positions since the beginning of February 2007. Since employment in Canadian manufacturing peaked in November 2002, this sector has lost 308,000 jobs. Construction and Resource Employment Falls • In June, CIBC […]
Read moreThe Bank of Canada goes to great pains to tell us that they have only one goal – namely to keep inflation at the mid point of the 1-3% target range – and have no view on the appropriate exchange rate of the Canadian dollar except insofar as it relates to this one goal. This stance is more than […]
Read moreVancouver political scientist Peter Pronzos emailed this review of Michael Byers’ new book, Intent for a Nation: “…so close to the United States†By Peter Pronzos Book review of Intent for a Nation: What is Canada For? By Michael Byers Douglas & McIntyre, 248 pages, $32.95 When former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien bowed to public opinion and refused to send […]
Read moreAn interesting story in The Tyee that picks up on evidence from the Conrad Black Trial (from a story in the Globe as blogged here), and runs with it. It is a telling insider story, one that nicely clears up the difference between the notion of competitive markets and the real world of capitalism and Big Media conglomerates: How Black […]
Read moreThe Wellesley Institute blog compares and contrasts a recent CCPA publication with the World Wealth Report: Two days, two reports, two very different worlds The World Wealth Report 2007 released on Wednesday by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini reports that the very rich (so-called high net worth individuals – HNWI) are getting even richer. And the forecast is the extremely […]
Read moreWriting an intervention in the NY Times, as NYC contemplates a congestion charge of its own, London Mayor Ken Livingstone makes the case based on London’s experience. A key success factor is the channeling of revenues from the tax into enhancing public transit, another example of offsetting regressive tax impacts on the spending side: … In 2003, London put in […]
Read moreIt’s great to have publications like The Western Standard keeping us on our toes. The following excerpt is from an article in today’s edition, “New Economy, Old Prejudices; Big Labour’s jobs campaign flies in the face of employment and wage growth,” that does not (yet) seem to be available online: The CLC contends that Canada’s loss of a quarter-million manufacturing […]
Read moreA dispatch by email from McMaster’s (and PEF member) Roy Adams on last month’s ruling: In a dramatic and entirely unexpected decision, the Supreme Court of Canada on June 8th “constitutionalized” collective bargaining in Canada. From its inception, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has had a freedom of association clause but in a series of decisions in the 1980s […]
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