Statistics Canada today released a study on immigrants in the job market, based on the recent inclusion of questions identifying immigration status in the Labour Force Survey. It’s no surprise to learn that unemployment levels are significantly higher among recent immigrants. In 2006, the unemployment rate among very recent immigrants (in Canada 5 years or less) was 11.5%, and it […]
Read moreIn Ontario, the election campaign is on. A topic of note is public dental care. Back in July, the NDP started the ball rolling: Calling poor dental health a “silent epidemic,” the leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party said Tuesday that the provincial government should provide care for children and low-income earners. Howard Hampton said an initial four-year program […]
Read moreThere’s no question that the Financial Post, as the National Post’s business section, tilts heavily to the right. However, today’s letters section (FP15) could almost have been copied and pasted from this blog. In the first letter, Shalom Schachter responds to the whiny Labour Day op-ed from John Mortimer of LabourWatch. In the second letter, Kris Larson notes that continued […]
Read moreThe Canadian Labour Congress news release follows: Employment statistics: no plan for coming layoffs, Georgetti says OTTAWA – “With so many high profile layoffs announced recently that have yet to come into effect, it is hard to find consolation in the modest employment creation statistics for the last month,” says Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress in regard to […]
Read moreI always thought so, but apparently this is not the case, according to an oped in the Nationial Post by Sean McPhee, president of the Vegetable Oil Industry of Canada, and Carole Pressault, a VP with the Certified General Accountants. It is one thing for business interests to call for deregulation – that is to be expected – but to […]
Read moreIn a Vancouver Sun feature article, UBC’s Hillel Goelman reviews evidence on early childhood education and makes the case for universal pre-kindergarten for three- and four-year-olds. Dollar for dollar this is probably the best investment would could make as a society. But progress has been slow, as it has been framed as a family issue by both sides. The educational […]
Read moreYesterday, I picked up Naomi Klein’s new book, The Shock Doctrine. It is something I’d been hearing about for some time, as I work with her brother, and Naomi gave a teaser with the keynote at our annual fundraising dinner this past February (video here). I’ll leave the summary to what is on the website, and point only to an […]
Read moreI have to renew my mortgage in a couple of weeks, but am wrestling with whether to go with a fixed or variable rate. A few months ago, when my credit union called, they guaranteed me a 5.8% fixed rate for three years, with the caveat that if rates went down by the time the current term expired they would […]
Read moreHere’s the link to a major empirical study on the impacts of the Liberal cuts to the Employment Insurance program, with a specific emphasis on impacts on women workers. The study is by Monica Townson and Kevin Hayes and was commissioned by Status of Women Canada , and quietly posted to their web site a couple of weeks ago.
Read moreThe Fraser Institute’s latest study of North American labour markets intends to demonstrate that public-sector employment, minimum wages, unionization, and labour laws that facilitate collective bargaining damage labour-market performance. However, its “Index of Labour Market Performance” measures the quantity of jobs with almost no regard for quality. Even this questionable index is not negatively correlated with the policies criticized by […]
Read moreJanice Kennedy has a pretty good assessment of the Afghanistan debate in today’s Ottawa Citizen. My only slight quibble is that she does not mention the Liberals, who got us into this quagmire.
Read moreHow do we explain the behaviour of the Japanese yen — which has not only avoided the major appreciation (against the U.S. dollar) that other major currencies have experienced (most acutely including Canada’s), but is actually down by over 15% since 2005 (despite Wall Street’s financial wobbles)? Japan has the world’s third largest trade surplus, so if exchange rates reflect […]
Read moreThe following column by Duncan Cameron is from rabble.ca: With the takeover of Stelco by U.S. Steel, Canada loses its last domestically owned steel producer. Despite urgings from the Steelworkers, the Canadian Autoworkers, and the Canadian Labour Congress, our provincial and federal governments have been unwilling to adopt a strategy to provide national direction to natural resource companies, and key industries. […]
Read moreI have just returned from the annual conference of the Canadian Association for Business Economics in Kingston. On Monday evening, we heard from Pierre Duguay, a Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada. Without specifically mentioning Jim’s Globe column, he suggested that some people mistook the Bank’s intervention in financial markets as a deviation from monetary policy’s exclusive focus on […]
Read moreAn interesting article just published by my friend Robert Blecker (American University) reinforces our concerns regarding the long-run impact of the loonie’s recent appreciation on the size and competitiveness of Canada’s manufacturing industry. Here’s the formal citation & abstract: The Economic Consequences of Dollar Appreciation for US Manufacturing Investment: A Time-Series Analysis Author: Robert A. Blecker a Affiliation: a American […]
Read moreHere’s an interesting sidebar to the current hissy fit roiling financial markets: It has turned out that Canada’s public debt is now dangerously low. Huh? We all know that where debt is concerned, private is good and public is bad. That’s why we cheer on consumers as they pump up their indebtedness to a record ratio (over 100%) of disposable income, […]
Read moreA friend just pointed a UN treaty (the International Covenant on Economic, social and cultural rights), to which Canada adhered in 1976, which states that signing parties should strive to tend towards free tuition for post-secondary education. It is in fact one of the “nine core international human rights treaty” (dixit UN website). The relevant article (see provision c) and […]
Read moreA couple of months ago, Robert Oxoby of the University of Calgary posted a joke paper comparing AC/DC’s original lead signer, Bon Scott, with his successor, Brian Johnson. The paper presented the results of an experiment in which test subjects responded less “rationally” to financial incentives in an “ultimatum game” when listening to Scott’s “It’s a Long Way to the […]
Read moreIn April 2006, Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams walked away from proposed Hebron development because the multinational oil companies were not offering sufficient benefits for his province. The national media and federal government heaped scorn on this decision. A couple of days ago, Williams secured a new deal that gives the province a 4.9% equity stake in Hebron, a 6.5% “super […]
Read moreForgive me for greeting the latest financial meltdown with a big yawn. We are facing a combination of two textbook cycles, neatly overlaying each other: 1. Classic speculative cycle:Â something catches the eye of speculators, they drive it up in price in search of (utterly unproductive) speculative profits, the rising price produces a self-fueling speculative bubble, and then something happens […]
Read moreNice to see the Bank of Canada swinging into action the last couple of weeks, pumping many billions of dollars of liquidity into financial markets to ease the sub-prime-inspired credit crunch, and making very hard-nosed statements about its intention to “defend†its desired interest rate regardless of where the markets want to go. Now that’s my kind of central bank. […]
Read moreWhereas Jim Stanford’s latest Globe column argues that central banks should be as willing to intervene on behalf of manufacturing as on behalf of hedge funds, Andrew Coyne’s column in today’s National Post argues that central banks should intervene as little as possible and not bail anyone out. At least Coyne’s position is consistent and avoids the double standard identified […]
Read moreThis post is in response to the following excellent comment from Stephen Moore, the man who will trounce Ralph Goodale in the next federal election (or at least do better than I did): April 2007 testimony before the parliamentary committee on International Trade saw Industry Canada, DFAIT reps and others stress the importance of the SPP (Security & Prosperity Partnership) […]
Read moreTo put some figures on yesterday’s commentary about the social-service download to municipalities and low provincial-income taxes, I checked the latest Equalization tables (which are publicly available from Finance Canada). In 2005/06, Ontario collected $22 billion of personal-income taxes. At national-average rates – an average dragged down by low-tax Alberta and by Ontario itself – Ontario’s income-tax base would have […]
Read morePremier McGuinty has pledged to relieve Ontario municipalities of $1 billion in disability-support payments and prescription-drug benefits if his government is re-elected. Municipalities will continue to pay for a further $3 billion of provincial social-service programs. During the Great Depression, Canada’s patchwork system of municipal relief proved totally inadequate. Subsequently, provincial governments established social-welfare programs and uploaded unemployment insurance to the federal […]
Read moreThere is a point in a good party when you decide either to stop and get home at a decent hour, or you throw caution to the wind and decide that there is no time like the present. In the current mess of the financial markets, how is it possible that any sane banker would not have noticed until now […]
Read moreToday’s National Post includes a letter from BC’s Minister of Economic Development, Colin Hansen, in response to my TILMA op-ed. It is great that the Post has facilitated some debate on this important issue and that the Government of BC feels compelled to participate in this debate. The fundamental point of disagreement is whether TILMA applies to all regulations (but […]
Read moreFor years, Don Drummond of TD Bank has publicly observed that business investment in Canada is lagging far behind soaring profits and called for further corporate-tax cuts to spur investment. He never seemed to perceive a contradiction between the fact that corporations are not reinvesting their record-high after-tax profits and the claim that even higher after-tax profits would boost investment. In a […]
Read moreOn Friday, the National Post’s lead editorial suggested that inter-provincial trade barriers are significant enough to validate the Quebec-separatist view that “Canada is not a real country.” The following edited response from yours truly is printed as a “Counterpoint” in today’s edition. UPDATE (August 16): BC’s Minister of Economic Development has responded to my op-ed. In a recent editorial, the […]
Read moreFollowing the National Post’s complete endorsement of TILMA on Friday, The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star ran columns on Saturday that were relatively skeptical of this agreement. As both columns note, the joint statement released by the Premiers in Moncton leaves the door open to making the Agreement on Internal Trade more like TILMA without committing to do so. […]
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