The US Federal Reserve today released its triennial examination of incomes and net worth of American households in the Survey of Consumer Finances. It shows the crushing effects on net worth of a housing and financial bust unparalleled since the great depression. The shocking results of this study overviewed in the New York Times are that ALL  real net wealth […]
Read morePrince Albert MP Randy Hoback began last week’s inquisition by objecting to my recent op-ed in The Saskatoon StarPheonix on the “Dutch disease†debate between Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and federal NDP leader Tom Mulcair. He then interrupted to question my NDP affiliation. As indicated in today’s Prince Albert Daily Herald (page A4), I would be happy to debate Hoback […]
Read moreReaders of this blog will have hopefully read my report “The big banks big secret” which examines the $114 billion that Canada’s banks received during the 2008-09 financial crisis.  Its major finding was that at some point three of Canada’s five big banks had received support worth more than their market capitalization, or the value of all the stock, at around $20-25 […]
Read moreCanada’s job market stalled in May. Employment edged up by 7,700, almost all of it part-time. In fact, the number of employees paid by Canadian employers fell by 15,600. Total “employment” rose only because 23,300 more Canadians reported themselves as self-employed. Over the past year, employment has grown slightly less than the labour force, leaving 1.4 million Canadians officially unemployed. […]
Read moreOn June 7, I gave a keynote address to the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees Education Sector Conference. My PowerPoint presentation (with full references) can be found at this link. Points I raised in the address include the following: -Canada’s economy has been growing quite steadily over the past three decades, even when one adjusts for inflation, and even when […]
Read moreFollowing are the notes on which I based presentations to the Senate National Finance Committee on June 6 and the House of Commons Finance Committee on May 29. They summarize key CLC concerns with the Budget Implementation Bill. Lack of Consultation The significant changes to the Employment Insurance (EI) program proposed in Budget 2012 should not be implemented without a […]
Read moreThere’s a fascinating new report from the Centre for the Study of Living Standards that calculates Human Development Index (HDI) scores for all of Canada’s provinces and territories. Here’s the citation: The Human Development Index in Canada: Estimates for the Canadian Provinces and Territories, 2000-2011, by Elspeth Hazell, Kar-Fai Gee, and Andrew Sharpe (Ottawa: Centre for the Study of Living […]
Read moreToday’s record low interest rates on long term Canadian government bonds present a fantastic opportunity to save money by borrowing more. Back last December I wrote a post pointing out that the federal government could and should be much more aggressive in locking in low interest rates by shifting new borrowing to long term bonds and away from T Bills. […]
Read moreHere’s the link to a TVO The Agenda panel I was on this Friday. Good to put some focus on the fact that the “real” unemployment rate for young people is 20%, while the youth employment rate is down a full five percentage points from 2007. My basic take is that it is not very surprising that youth unemployment and […]
Read moreStatsCan released the first-quarter GDP numbers this morning, and the deafening silence you hear is of champagne corks not popping. Quarterly growth was 0.5% (1.9% annualized): uninspiring but not disastrous. Erin Weir has aptly pointed out the leading role of government spending cuts in dragging down growth. Erin noted that government current consumption fell 0.4% in the quarter. Government investment […]
Read moreUntil quite recently, it seemed that the global economy was set for an extended period of stagnation, lacking an obvious engine of growth in the advanced economies as households deleveraged, as governments imposed harsh fiscal austerity programs, and as corporations failed to see any good reason to invest significantly in new capacity. Relative optimists could point to China, Brazil, India […]
Read moreCanada’s economy grew by half a percent in the first quarter of 2012, staying on pace for unimpressive annual growth of two percent. The good news is that business investment was strong, at least on a seasonally-adjusted basis. (As usually happens in the first quarter, the actual dollar value of business investment decreased.) Unfortunately, the other major components of GDP […]
Read moreToday’s Globe editorial provides further evidence of distorted economic reasoning being rolled out to attack Thomas Mulcair. “Mr. Mulcair seems to long for a golden age of manufacturing and a low dollar, but his longing won’t take Canada anywhere. Not only the dollar but Asian competition has inflicted damage on Canadian exporters.” The implication seems to be that the over-valued […]
Read moreSo many big changes are happening in Bill C-38 that some significant issues like the changes to the Federal Contractors Program (FCP) have escaped attention. Part 4 Division 42 of C-38 is very short. It merely says that subsection 42(2) of the Employment Equity Act is replaced by the following: “The Minister is responsible for the administration of the Federal […]
Read moreThe government of Prince Edward Island has introduced a Social Action Plan to Reduce Poverty, found online at PEI CSS. This Action Plan follows community consultations, including face-to-face meetings and written submissions by community groups. The government of PEI seems to take very seriously a Social Determinants of Health approach to poverty reduction, and so has exempted departments of health, […]
Read moreDespite the remarkably poor media coverage of the early days of the protests (especially in English Canada), it seems that the Quebec student protestors have finally succeeded in sparking a broader public discussion about civil liberties and the right to protest (even in the Globe here, here and in the Celebrity Photo captions). Yet, media commentators have largely dismissed the […]
Read moreI, Jason Clemens from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and David Macdonald from the CCPA discussed the social and economic implications of growing income inequality on an ipolitics panel yesterday. Jason was a bit outgunned so I won’t go after him here, except to say that he took the usual neo liberal tack of shifting the debate to poverty so as to […]
Read moreSaskatchewan conservatives are getting cranky. At last night’s Finance Committee meeting on the omnibus bill, MP Randy Hoback exposed me as being a New Democrat who writes “garbage†(as this blog’s readers already know). Full video of the meeting is available here, with my presentation starting two hours in. UPDATE (June 1): Hoback’s attack has been covered by Macleans, CBC […]
Read moreSaskatchewan’s Minister of Energy and Resources replied to my op-ed and letter on Dutch disease and resource royalties. On Friday, he was promoted to Minister of Everything. Columnist Murray Mandryk wrote, “Given the amount of power Bill Boyd now has in his super-economy portfolio, he may be one fluffy Persian cat and remote desert island shy of becoming the political […]
Read moreLast week I was in Whitehorse where I released a peer-reviewed policy report on poverty in Yukon. The report was part of the much larger Social Economy Research Network of Northern Canada project. Report findings include the following: -Ignoring poverty can be quite costly, as has been clearly demonstrated by research on the ‘costs of poverty’ done by economist Nathan […]
Read moreChanges to the EI rules announced by the government today are not rooted in any lengthy policy rationale. But Minister Finley and and the media release spoke to the need to “strengthen work incentives.” This conjures up images of unemployed workers sitting around and spurning job offers amidst growing labour and skills shortages. As I have previously commented, this framing […]
Read moreAs Heather Scoffield of Canadian Press reports here, Statistics Canada are no longer publishing key EI data because HRSDC have stopped providing it. Data on the dollar value of EI regular benefits are not published in the monthly Statscan release, but were available each month on CANSIM…Â until March of this year. As reported on Sam Boshra’s Economic Justice blog, […]
Read moreStatistics Canada reported today that 2,500 fewer Canadians received Employment Insurance (EI) benefits in March. In total, only 549,400 out of 1,356,200 officially unemployed workers got benefits. The context for proposals to clamp down on EI is that only 40% of unemployed Canadians currently receive benefits. The Harper government wants to exclude even more jobless workers from a program they paid […]
Read moreLast week, I had the following letter in The Globe and Mail: Oil sands royalties The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers’ most recent Statistical Handbook indicates that, in 2010, this industry sold $101-billion of oil and gas but paid only $12-billion in resource royalties. Even Senator Pamela Wallin’s higher figure of $22-billion (Oil Sands’ Benefits – letter, May 12), which […]
Read moreDFAIT’s web site currently lists 18 different trade deals currently “in play” (and that doesn’t count the Trans-Pacific Partnership, where Ottawa is so far just flirting). But Harper’s push to sign as many FTAs as possible while he has a majority will not improve Canada’s actual trade, which is deteriorating (both quantitatively and qualitatively) the more FTAs the government signs. Linked […]
Read moreI am an enthusiastic reader of Krugman’s columns and, especially, his economic blog. And I certainly side strongly with him in the intellectual and political struggle against “the Austerians” and “Very Serious People” who are unnecessarily prolonging the Great Recession in America and in Europe. That said, Krugman’s latest book “End This Recession Now” (Norton, New York, 2012) is not […]
Read moreAccording to today’s Globe, the government says that the major target of pending changes to EI is frequent claimants, who are disproportionately to be found in the high unemployment regions. This focus seems to reflect the common belief that supposedly “overgenerous” EI benefits stop some people from moving from high to low unemployment regions. Interesting to note, then, that research […]
Read moreHere are the most recent Statscan job vacancy data by province. There were six unemployed workers for every reported job vacancy in Canada in the three months ending in January, rising to about ten unemployed workers for every open job slot in Atlantic Canada. Note that there is no information on what wages employers were prepared to offer to fill […]
Read moreToday, Statistics Canada reported an annual inflation rate of 2%, precisely in line with the Bank of Canada’s target. With inflation under control and renewed risks to the global economy, there is little rationale for the central bank to raise interest rates anytime soon. In fact, the Bank of Canada should now be more concerned about the exchange rate than […]
Read moreI’ve commented on federal job cuts many times before (here, here, here & here) and in the interests of beating this particular horse good and dead (no animals were harmed in the writing of these reports), the CCPA today is releasing my latest update on the matter: Clearing away the fog: Government Estimates of job losses. It has already gotten […]
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