The following note, including tables, is available on the Canadian Labour Congress website: Free trade was promoted to Canadians on the famous promise of “jobs, jobs, and more jobs†and is widely defended on the basis that Canada’s large trade surplus with the US contributes to Canadian employment. Meanwhile, American commentators are concerned that the US trade deficit displaces American […]
Read moreKen Georgetti and leaders of major manufacturing unions just finished meeting with the Prime Minister about Canada’s ongoing manufacturing crisis. The Canadian Labour Congress briefing note quoted by The Globe and Mail online follows: The Manufacturing Crisis Overview Canada’s manufacturing sector is in crisis. High energy prices, a high dollar, and worsening trade deficits with Asia have caused many Canadian […]
Read moreMonday’s federal budget will certainly reaffirm the corporate-tax reductions already scheduled through 2011 and may announce further reductions. Between 2001 and 2004, the federal government reduced its corporate-income-tax rate from 28% to 21% and began phasing out its corporate-capital tax. It has committed to eliminate the corporate surtax and reduce the corporate-income-tax rate to 18.5% between 2008 and 2011. These latter reductions […]
Read moreThis morning, Statistics Canada released its Labour Force Survey figures for February. My analysis, which was included in the CLC’s press release, follows: Manufacturing Crisis Deepens Canada lost 35,000 manufacturing jobs between January and February. This staggering one-month decline pushes the cumulative loss to 250,000 since Canadian manufacturing peaked in November 2002. Most of February’s devastating decline took place in […]
Read moreTo flesh out the cost-effectiveness issue outlined below, consider the following figures. McKenzie estimates that a 10% decrease in the cost of R&D due to a tax credit increases R&D by 2% in the short term and 7% in the long term, but that a 10% decrease in the effective tax rate on production increases R&D by 3% in the […]
Read moreIn setting monetary policy, the Bank of Canada emphasizes “Core CPI,” which excludes the most volatile components of the Consumer Price Index to provide a clearer measure of underlying trends. My last post noted that average Canadian wage increases exceeded inflation by only 1% during the past year. However, inflation was held down by a dip in energy prices. Therefore, […]
Read moreThe Canadian Labour Congress is one of several institutions that comments on Statistics Canada’s monthly Labour Force Survey. As the Ottawa Sun reported last week, a striking fact in the latest release was the net loss of 10,000 full-time positions in Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland in January.   February 10, 2007 Job numbers game Rising employment figures don’t tell true story of […]
Read moreAs Marc noted, the Toronto Star is waging a journalistic “war on poverty”. The editorial in Monday’s National Post chastised “The Toronto Star’s poverty scam” for using the Low-Income Cut-Off, a relative measure, as an indicator of poverty. Today’s National Post includes the following letter from yours truly: In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, the founder of free-market economics, wrote, […]
Read moreProgressive economists should be disturbed about the cut to Statistics Canada’s Budget announced yesterday by Ministers Flaherty and Baird. The agency has to realize “operational efficiencies” amounting to $15 Million over two years – which may mean cancellation of one or two major surveys, or cuts to staff undertaking research and analysis. Despite the recent glitch in the CPI, StatsCan […]
Read moreOn the front page of today’s Globe and Mail, it was reported that Statistics Canada’s estimates of the Consumer Price Index had been miscalculated by a weany one-tenth of a percentage point since 2001. I know of a more pressing problem with Statscan data, and so do they: conventional surveys are vastly understating the incomes of the poorest Canadians, and […]
Read moreToday’s Daily from Statscan points to a new short review of Canadian R&D spending, 2002 to 2006. They report: Spending on industrial research and development (R&D) will edge up this year, according to reported intentions. Canadian companies will spend an estimated $14.9 billion on R&D, up 1.3% from the preliminary figure for 2005. Manufacturers will spend an estimated $8.3 billion, […]
Read moreThat sinking feeling is coming on. The US economy is slowing and several well-respected economists have made their call. Leading off, Paul Krugman: The key point is that the forces that caused a recession five years ago never went away. Business spending hasn’t really recovered from the slump it went into after the technology bubble burst… Also, the trade deficit […]
Read moreThe latest Labour Force Survey, released today, has national unemployment down 0.3 percentage points to 6.1%, the lowest monthly rate since December 1974. So low that the Daily adds the following note on comparability: Comparing current Labour Force Survey estimates to those prior to 1976 In recent months, the Labour Force Survey (LFS) has been reporting very low unemployment rates. […]
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