It has recently been reported that the University of Alberta wants to “reopen two-year collective agreements” with faculty and staff “to help the university balance its budget…” This appears to be in direct response to Alberta’s provincial government announcing in its March budget that there would be a “7% cut to operating grants to universities, colleges, and technical institutes.” This […]
Read moreFor the “You Read It Here First†file, I wrote on Friday: Toronto Centre needs a candidate with a track record of advancing more substantive and more progressive positions on economic issues. Specifically, the NDP should nominate someone who can take on Freeland regarding inequality and what to do about it. Today, Linda McQuaig announced her candidacy for the NDP […]
Read moreChrystia Freeland, The Globe and Mail’s candidate in Toronto Centre, recently wrote a book about inequality (which I have not yet read) and is supposed to “bring fresh thinking to the Liberal Party’s economic team.†She has already attracted a few jabs from right-wingers Terence Corcoran and William Watson. But is she progressive? The Globe gave Freeland more than 900 […]
Read moreIt started with a car accident in February, and the total loss of our 2004 Prius, which had only been ours for less than a year. We were quickly compensated for its market value and were in a position to buy another car, but we held off due to a looming sabbatical that would take us out of the country […]
Read moreLast fall, Greek magazine editor Kostas Vaxevanis published in his magazine Hot Doc a list of 2,000 wealthy Greeks who were hiding taxable savings in the Geneva branch of HSBC. The list had been furnished years earlier by the then French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde to the Greek government, who did nothing in regards to chasing after the money or the offenders […]
Read moreI’m back from a short sabbatical, grateful for some time outside of my daily work and home life, feeling all big picture. But as I settle back into work, I feel like I’m seated in a Theatre of the Absurd play. My news feeds are pulling up astonishing things. Exhibit one: the North Pole at the moment is a one-foot-deep aquamarine […]
Read morePotashCorp reported today that it paid $81 million of “provincial mining and other taxes†on $975 million of potash sales in the second quarter of 2013. In other words, Saskatchewan’s potash production tax and resource surcharge amounted to 8% of potash sales. Adding the basic Crown royalty of just over 2% (which PotashCorp includes in the “cost of goods soldâ€), […]
Read moreToday, Statistics Canada reported a seemingly impressive monthly rise of 0.9% in average weekly earnings, from $906.24 in April to $914.68 in May. Digging a bit deeper reveals that average weekly earnings for workers paid by the hour – the majority of Canadian employees – edged up by only 0.2%, from $695.21 in April to $696.57 in May. And that […]
Read moreFederal political candidates register their occupations with Elections Canada. I was recently looking through some election results and noticed that my old friend, Ralph Goodale, has had quite a varied career during his time as an MP. In every federal election he contested prior to 1993, Ralph identified himself as a lawyer. That changed to “business executive†for the 1993 […]
Read moreFurther to my earlier post on the OECD’s new data on employment performance across its 34 member countries (and Canada’s relatively poor ranking in that regard), another part of the OECD Employment Outlook 2013 that is also worth reading in detail is Chapter 2.Â
Read moreToday, Statistics Canada reported an inflation rate of 1.2% for June, validating the Bank of Canada’s recent decision to keep interest rates low for the foreseeable future. The rationale to raise interest rates would be to curb inflation, which is already under control and well below the central bank’s 2% target. But even at 1.2%, inflation eats up more than […]
Read moreStatistics Canada reported today that 12,290 fewer Canadians received Employment Insurance (EI) benefits in May compared to April. EI benefits are shrinking far faster than unemployment. In percentage terms, the number of EI recipients declined as much in just the last month as unemployment declined over the past year. Between April and May, the number of unemployed Canadians decreased by […]
Read moreThe federal government never tires of boasting that Canada’s labour market has performed better than most other countries through the financial crisis and subsequent recession, and that the number of Canadians working today is greater than it was before the recession hit. That means we have fully recovered from the downturn, and the Tories are good economic managers, right? Wrong.
Read moreUpon being appointed Minister of the newly renamed “Employment and Social Development” (formerly HRSDC), Mr. Kenney tweeted his view on the Canadian labour market: “I will work hard to end the paradox of too many people without jobs in an economy that has too many jobs without people. #shuffle13“ Coincidentally, perhaps, the most recent Statistics Canada numbers on job vacancies […]
Read moreStatistics Canada recently released new data on the incomes of Canadians and it shows two worrisome trends continuing through the economic recovery: BC has the highest poverty rate in Canada and the highest child poverty rate (tied with Manitoba); and Ordinary families haven’t had a raise since 2008 – family incomes in the middle continue to stagnate (more on this […]
Read moreToday’s job numbers are remarkably similar to last month’s figures. Total employment as well as employment in most sectors and industries was virtually unchanged. Stagnation is bad news given our growing population and that 1.4 million Canadians remain unemployed. There were also some notable shifts beneath the headline numbers. Total employment stayed the same because 32,200 additional part-time positions masked […]
Read moreLast week, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released my policy brief on Saskatchewan job-creation. Using Statistics Canada figures, it demonstrated that “workforce growth has been almost identical during the premierships of Brad Wall and Lorne Calvert.†Unsurprisingly, the main explanatory variable for Saskatchewan employment appears to be commodity prices rather than the party in power. The governing Saskatchewan Party […]
Read moreToday, I had the following commentary posted on The Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab: The loonie is overvalued and the Bank of Canada has room to act On Tuesday, Christopher Ragan characterized the notion of an overvalued Canadian dollar as a “seductive myth†that the Bank of Canada should not act to address. I have made the case that we should […]
Read moreSo, the National Household Survey’s Portrait of Canada’s labour force is out, and I can’t help but think of Donald Rumsfeld’s known unknowns. We know that we don’t know anything about those who didn’t respond to the survey, or how they might be different from those that did. We also know that there are some discrepancies in terms of labour […]
Read moreThe Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has released my policy brief (PDF) on Saskatchewan employment growth. It generated front-page coverage in today’s Saskatoon StarPhoenix and Regina Leader-Post business sections as well as this snazzy online infographic. The press release follows: Premier Wall’s Employment Record Lags Calvert and Blakeney Regina – A new policy brief from the Canadian Centre for Policy […]
Read moreToday I gave a presentation on Canadian housing policy at the annual conference of the European Network for Housing Research. Points raised in the presentation include the following: -Fiscal context, more so than which party has been in government, appears to have shaped federal housing policy in Canada over the past two decades. Program expenses by the federal government (as […]
Read moreThere has appropriately been a lot a criticism about Bill C-377 at House of Commons committees and the Senate. Â Hugh Segal has been particularly eloquent as have the many submissions. Graham Cox has a good selection of them on his Citizens’ Press website. Here’s a short summary with a dozen reasons why it’s so bad: Twelve Reasons why C-377 is […]
Read moreI attended a lovely memorial service this week for Hugh Lukin Robinson, long-time labour economist and progressive activist in Ontario who passed away a few months ago at the ripe old age of 96. The memorial service was organized by his family (including his son Michael) at the Park-Hyatt Hotel, and was attended by friends and colleagues from Lukin’s very […]
Read moreThe Institute for Research on Public Policy has published a very interesting overview study on the resuscitation of “industrial policy” in economic policy circles. It points out that industrial policy levers are used widely by countries around the world–despite hypothetical efforts (through trade deals and other institutions) to limit their application.Â
Read moreInterestingly, the day after the new Bank of Canada Governor gave a speech distancing himself from his predecessor’s “dead money†comments, Statistics Canada released a significant downward revision to the usual measure of corporate cash accumulation. The cash holdings of private non-financial corporations reached $594 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012, so I was curious to see if they […]
Read moreSo Erin talked about falling EI benefits last month, which got me thinking about the longer term trend here. Comparing seasonally unadjusted data for the last five Aprils, we see a steady decline in the proportion of unemployed workers that are receiving EI. Â Since April 2009, unemployment in Canada has fallen by nearly 150,000, which is about a 10% decline […]
Read moreToday’s CBC Edition Business Panel focused on the proposal by Fraser Surrey Docks to build a new coal terminal on the Fraser river to export US thermal coal (if you missed it, here’s the recording starting at 1:50). This may seem like a local issue for the West Coast, but the arguments stand for most of the debates on new […]
Read moreThere’s a hilarious piece in today’s National Post by Dean Beeby, who cleverly used an access to information request to ferret out a copy of the training manual they use for the summer students who guide tourists around Parliament Hill. Anticipating critical questions about the role of the Senate in our modern-day democracy, the students are primed to highlight its virtue […]
Read moreThis is the title of a recently published biography of Albert Hirschmam by Jeremy Adelman, a Canadian who teaches history at Princeton University. Hirschman’s life as an economist – which spanned so much of the 20th century – is worth learning about for it makes us think hard about what has happened to economics over those years and what it […]
Read moreWith Prime Minister Harper making the diplomatic rounds in Europe, media interest has heightened this week regarding the potential free trade agreement which his government is trying to negotiate with the European Union. Several deadlines to reach that deal have come and gone, but the Conservatives are still heavily committed to reaching a deal as a centrepiece of their economic […]
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