As Christmas presents go, this one was a shocker: Over lunch on Monday, cash-strapped Finance Minister Jim Flaherty promised provincial and territorial finance ministers he’d increase federal funding for health care by six per cent each year for the next five years.  No strings attached. No negotiations. A done deal. With a catch. The provinces and territories have five years […]
Read moreStatistics Canada reported today that the annual inflation rate remained 2.9% and the Bank of Canada’s core rate remained 2.1% in November. The monthly increase in consumer prices slowed to 0.1% in November from 0.3% in October. The monthly increase in core prices slowed to 0.1% in November from 0.2% in October. Inflation remains modest and should not deter the […]
Read moreDuring the federal election, I noted in a Toronto Star op-ed that the federal Conservative platform entails significant fiscal costs for provincial governments. I accepted the Conservatives’ promise to continue the 6% escalator for the Canada Health Transfer, but worried that they might cut other transfers of similar value. Today, the Finance Minister unveiled plans to discontinue the Canada Health […]
Read moreIt may be a grim Christmas for thousands of unemployed Canadians. Today’s Employment Insurance figures show that fewer workers received benefits in October, even as more became unemployed and filed EI claims. Specifically, the number of people receiving regular benefits declined from 546,580 in September to 541,230 in October. The Labour Force Survey indicates that unemployment rose from 1,334,200 in September […]
Read moreAs is well known, the youth unemployment rate remains high, and well above average. It stood at 14.1% in November or more than double the unemployment rate of 6.3%Â for persons aged 25 to 54, and 6.2% for those aged 55 and over. What is a little bit more surprising is that the youth unemployment rate, while down from the […]
Read moreHere’s a guest post from Ben Gillies, a political economy grad from the University of Manitoba. Canadians Must Not Let Dubious Political Tactics Turn Us Off Politics Altogether By Benjamin Gillies Last week, the Conservatives admitted their party was behind a rash of phone calls to Liberal Irwin Cotler’s federal riding in Montreal, in which constituents were apparently informed of […]
Read moreMark Carney’s widely publicized speech on the state of the global and domestic economy is worth a careful read. He is bang on in much of his analysis of what ails the advanced economies today – the ongoing deleveraging from a long period of unsustainable public and private debt accumulation relative to GDP in which growth was driven mainly by […]
Read moreThe United Nations climate change talks in Durban, South Africa, ended 2011 with a whimper. After a year in which climate disasters rolled across the globe, major polluting nations like Canada chose to ignore them, seeking instead to disrupt the Durban negotiations, then blew the world a raspberry, by officially pulling out of the Kyoto Accord. I’ve been trying to […]
Read moreA comprehensive study released today by CUPE shows there’s no evidence public sector workers are paid consistently more than those in similar jobs in the private sector. Instead, overall average pay in the public sector is remarkably similar when compared against similar jobs in the private sector: only 0.5 per cent higher. This public sector pay premium can be entirely […]
Read moreIn June 2012, the PEF will be awarding the third John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics. Nominations are now open to all PEF members in good standing (if you are a lapsed member or want to join for the first time, click here), and the window for nominations will stay open until January 31, 2012. Just email your nomination, with […]
Read moreStatistics Canada released an interesting study today on the slowdown of productivity growth in Canadian manufacturing. Conservative economists tend to view productivity as a microeconomic issue, reflecting the allocation of scarce resources through the market. The way to maximize productivity is to remove taxes, regulations and other “barriers†to the market’s free functioning. However, the largest driver of productivity is […]
Read moreThe conventional line has been, no. Our banks were strong. Unlike the US and Europe, no bailout was needed to deal with the global financial crisis of 2008. This line, of course, always conveniently neglected the Extraordinary Financing Framework, or dismissed it as trivial. Now Finance Minister Flaherty – seeking new powers to turn down foreign investments by our banks […]
Read moreHere is the first newsletter of what promises to be a very worthwhile initiative.
Read moreGood coverage in the Globe for the CLC’s calculations on the huge negative impact of high management fees on investment returns from RRSPs and the like, as opposed to the low cost CPP. Does anybody out there find the investment fund industry response (we are providing good advice) convincing? If so, you will just love PRPPs!
Read moreFurther to Toby’s post, the OECD report on inequality is well worth a careful read. It bolsters, through careful empirical and cross country analysis, two key arguments long advanced by the labour movement and progressive economists: -Â key trends in the labour market – widening wage disparity between top earners and the rest, and the disproportionate growth of precarious jobs […]
Read moreFollowing concern expressed by the IMF, the Conference Board and of course thousands of protesters around the world, the OECD has just released an extensive 400 page report on the problem of growing inequality: Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps on Rising. I haven’t read through it yet, and it also has quite a lot of other information for downloading […]
Read moreAn astute piece from Andy Watt. He thinks that we shall indeed soon see what markets are anticipating – the long deferred grand bargain, in which the ECB backstops euro bonds (thus averting a banking and sovereign debt crisis), in return for which euro countries agree to much enhanced surveillance of national fiscal policies. That brings into question what policies […]
Read moreI join other progressive bloggers in mourning the loss of Joe Kuchta. As CBC reported, his investigative approach to Saskatchewan and Saskatoon politics was widely respected. I drew upon his insights several times in debating the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement.
Read moreToday’s Labour Force Survey indicates that the seemingly robust economic growth reported by Statistics Canada earlier this week is not translating into improved job prospects for Canadian workers. For the second consecutive month, employment is down and unemployment is up. (By contrast, the situation improved south of the border.) Manufacturing: Another Record Low Although overall employment in goods-producing industries rose […]
Read moreHere is an amazing multimedia article published by Bloomberg Markets Magazine in the U.S., that lists all of the individual banks which received financial assistance from the U.S. Federal Reserve during the 2008-09 crisis. It shows each bank’s peak borrowing from the Fed, the number of days they held the funds, and the timeline for paying it back. You can […]
Read moreStatsitics Canada released the third quarter GDP numbers today, and on the surface they seem pretty upbeat, considering all the doom and gloom lately. Headline real GDP grew at an annualized 3.5% rate. I predicted a few weeks back that there was no chance that the 3Q number would be negative (thus sparing us a “technical recession,” on the tails […]
Read moreRabble.ca is running a series of reflections on the tenth anniversary of the New Politics Initiative, which sought to create a more democratic politics in Canada ideally as part of a revitalized NDP. The vision statement is here; my piece follows, and there are also contributions from Judy Rebick and Jim Stanford. Altogether these make for a timely reflection on directions for […]
Read moreOn Sunday, CTV leaked Canada’s intentions to pull out of the Kyoto treaty process on climate change. What is significant about Kyoto is that it is a legally binding international treaty, and one that puts the onus of emission reductions on the countries that have done the most to cause the problem (and who have most benefitted in their industrialization through […]
Read moreThe OECD’s new assessment of the macro-economic situation makes for pretty grim reading. And their forecast of very sluggish global growth (just 1.6% for the OECD area in 2012) is based on an increasingly incredible view that the Eurozone will “muddle through”and experience only a mild recession. They do not seem to have convinced even themselves that this is really […]
Read moreThis new study from Education International looks interesting. “This EI study follows on from a previous study published in March 2010 by Global Financial Integrity, a research and advocacy organisation promoting transparency in the international financial system, estimating that current total deposits just by non-residents in offshore and secrecy jurisdictions were close to US$10 trillion. The US, the UK and […]
Read moreA new issue of the International Journal of Labour Research has been published “While a lot of attention has been deservedly given to the financial roots of the current economic crisis, the role of wages as a cause to the crisis as well as a solution to the current economic predicament have yet to be fully understood. To help fill […]
Read moreLast week, I was in Yellowknife, where I released results of new research on affordable housing in the Northwest Territories (NWT). The research project was sponsored by the Social Economy Research Network of Northern Canada, and was a collaboration with the Centre for Northern Families. Research findings include the following: -Housing indicators suggest that the state of housing in the NWT […]
Read moreI was quoted in the House of Commons question period yesterday by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. “Hon. Jim Flaherty (Minister of Finance, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I know the NDP bandies about numbers with respect to jobs, so I thought I would seek some authority about their numbers. I went to one of the large unions and I checked what they […]
Read moreThe labour market is in much worse shape than the official 7.3% unemployment rate implies. The latest evidence for this proposition is today’s miserable report on employment and earnings from Statistics Canada. Further to Andrew Jackson’s post on today’s release, most media coverage of this report focuses on year-over-year measures of growth in hourly wages and weekly wages. And on […]
Read moreI’ve blogged on this before, and continue to be surprised by the lack of attention paid to the significant ongoing decline of real wages. Falling wages are a key indicator of a very soft job market, and have the potential to undermine still quite strong household spending. Today’s Statscan release of the payroll data show that Average Weekly Earnings including […]
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