I have the following op-ed in today’s Regina Leader-Post. Below it is a table supporting my statement that “the mines that PCS owned in 1989 still account for 80 per cent of its potash production and capacity.†Privatizing Potash was a Costly Mistake The greatest tragedy in BHP Billiton’s $38.6-billion (U.S.) bid for the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan (PCS) is […]
Read more           Canada’s federal government made an important announcement this week.  It was kept deliberately quiet: with a news release issued at 4:45 pm on a calm Tuesday in the middle of the late-summer news “dead zone.” But it should set alarm bells ringing for anyone concerned with the anti-democratic direction of global trade law.
Read moreAn article in today’s Globe and Mail discusses some new research funding for the University of Alberta. In particular, the article notes: The U of A ranks second in total research funding, behind only U of T and up from fifth in 2006. This year, the U of A will spend $514-million on research, more than double its total from […]
Read moreLast week, I was in Halifax at USW’s Ontario-Atlantic district conference. It was a great conference in a great city. But having so many key people out of the office limited our response to BHP Billiton’s bid for the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan. (Next time BHP launches a hostile takeover, it should better coordinate the timing with interested unions.) Nevertheless, […]
Read moreI got this wrong first time round. Krugman commends Nick Rowe over at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative for his spirited views and writing on monetary policy.
Read moreProf. Myron Gordon was an economist, a long-time member of faculty at the Rotman School of business at the U of T, and a founding member of the Progressive Economics Forum. Sadly he passed away in Toronto on July 5 of this year. My Gordon was very influential with me, and I know with many other independent-minded economists in Canada.  In 1998 […]
Read moreOne million. No, it’s not the number of posts that Armine has written about the census. (I count only 32.) A million is the number of times this blog has been viewed since Marc started it back in the summer of 2006. It has been an eventful few years in Canadian economics: the commodity “super cycle,†financial crisis, Great Recession, […]
Read morePaul Krugman agrees with my view that the bond market is signaling long term economic stagnation rather than experiencing a bubble – and he is, of course, far more influential and cogent than I. “But the argument has become even stranger recently, as it has become clear that investors aren’t worried about deficits; they’re worried about stagnation and deflation. And […]
Read moreTom Flanagan, Steven Harper’s guru in younger days and a political sherpa who helped guide the rise of the New Right in Canada in its early days, has put in his two cents on the census affair. It is a thoughtful piece, if somewhat predictable. But it leans on two important facts in an erroneous way. In both cases, my […]
Read moreThis morning, Statistics Canada reported that the implementation of Harmonized Sales Tax in Ontario and British Columbia helped drive the national inflation rate from 1.0% in June to 1.8% in July. By comparison, the Bank of Canada’s core inflation rate (which excludes tax changes and volatile items) edged down from 1.7% to 1.6%. However, annual inflation rates are not the […]
Read moreThere are many ways to view the legacy of Prime Minister Harper and his Government thus far, but few offer evidence that the processes and institutions of democracy are held with any esteem. The selection of the latest Governor General of Canada has been described as one such rare example. The process of selecting the Governor General was, notably, an […]
Read moreThe short answer to that question is that I don’t know. I am not a believer in the infallibility of financial markets and perfect information and all that stuff. But the bond market is surely speaking loud and clear. As an aside, the media focus excessively on the ups and downs of the stock market. But bond markets are at […]
Read moreDon Tapscott nails it in his commentary in today’s Globe and Mail. Everyone wants to see and not be seen. That’s getting less possible, even for the most guarded individual. Today’s zeitgeist is Google, and the Google Zeitgeist is transparency. The push-back — and every thesis has its antithesis, as all you Hegel fans out there know – comes from […]
Read moreYes, yawn, fiscal federalism is pretty darn dull. But it is also pretty darn important. The division of responsibilities and resources between the feds and the provinces is central to the shape of Canadian fiscal policy overall and to the level and design of a host of jointly financed programs, including health, post secondary education and infrastructure investment. I spent […]
Read moreIn the past few weeks some of Canada’s most respected economic authorities, including Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, have voiced concerns over the fragility of the recovery, globally and at home. Now Paul Krugman joins that chorus of Cassandras, pointing his finger straight at the wishful thinkers who say Canada’s heavy lifting is done when it comes to economic […]
Read moreThe recent controversy over the long-form census has caused me to be a bit more suspicious of Statscan lately. Two recent events in particular have left me scratching my head. First, as part of my doctoral dissertation research, I was trying to get ahold of (time series) social assistance statistics for all 10 Canadian provinces, namely social assistance rates and caseloads, going back […]
Read moreStatement issued yesterday: RESOLVING THE CENSUS DEBATE Welcoming the Changes Announced on August 11th The National Statistics Council, the senior, external advisory group appointed by the government of Canada to advise the Chief Statistician, has noted the Government’s announcement that it intends “to remove threats of jail time for persons refusing to fill out the census†and its recognition that […]
Read moreOn Thursday, the Globe and Mail’s post-secondary education blogger, Alex Usher, wrote this piece, in which he argues that any increased government assistance with the goal of increasing access to university ought to be targeted to low-income students (and not consist of an across-the-board tuition reduction). I have three points to make in response to this. First, while Mr. Usher […]
Read moreSince I last posted something on the Census here (August 1! Time flies!), every passing day has advanced the census story with dizzying speed. I’ve said it before: this story has more legs than a bucket of chicken. Here are the top notes of the last 10 days, ending in a fascinating and uniquely Canadian lesson in politics. It is […]
Read moreJack Boan retired from the University of Regina’s economics department before I began studying there. Although I never had the privilege of taking a class from him, I received a medal named in his honour. Recently, I was pleased to see Dr. Boan zing the Harper government with a couple of letters to the editor. He had one in Friday’s Globe […]
Read moreThey are according to a couple of bank economists cited in a prominent story today’s Globe who think the big loss of education jobs in July (down 60,000) is due to a failure by Stats Can to properly calibrate seasonal adjustment to take account of supposed recent changes in employment patterns. They think many education workers are now laid off […]
Read moreThe Mark are running a contribution of mine on the latest job numbers and the continued need for special EI and job creation measures.
Read moreGwyn Morgan may have made a lot of money for EnCana shareholders, but I have rarely found his economic commentary in the Report on Business to be very well-informed. The main point he makes in today’s column “New Economic Order Demands New Attitude” is accurate if familiar – Canada participates in the global economy primarily as a commodity producer and […]
Read moreFrom my colleague CLC Senior Economist Sylvain Schetagne: The performance of the labour market in July 2010 was catastrophic. The unemployment rate is back up to 8.0%. The number of full-time jobs in Canada decreased very rapidly in July, when 139,000 full-time jobs were eliminated. The number of permanent employees fell by even more, by 144,400. Full-time job losses were […]
Read moreIn recent months, Canada’s job numbers seemed a little too good to be true. Today’s Labour Force Survey paints a more sobering picture. Employment was somewhat lower in July, among both employees and the self-employed. Far more significant than the overall decline in employment was the replacement of 139,000 full-time positions with 129,700 part-time positions. The revelation that so many […]
Read moreMy union was among many organizations listed in opposition to the senseless census decision in Wednesday’s Globe and Mail editorial. Three organizations were listed as supporting it. The Fraser Institute and National Citizens’ Coalition have understandable motives for wanting to eliminate the mandatory long form. First, there are libertarian “privacy†concerns. Second, depriving the government of reliable census data would […]
Read moreI’ve blogged previously on this topic but it is worth revisiting in light of the Census debate. The gold standard for looking at racial pay gaps is analysis of differences in earnings between Canadian born whites and visible minorities since this excludes differences between immigrants and non immigrants (most importantly country of education and work experience.) This is really only […]
Read moreWhile the Canadian economy has begun to recover from the “Great Recession†in terms of the level of GDP and overall job growth, unemployment and under-employment still remain well above pre-recession levels. The national unemployment rate in June 2010 was 7.9%, well up from 6.0% two years earlier. The number of unemployed workers was, at 1,475,000, still more than 300,000 […]
Read moreJames Altucher posted an interesting article and video making the case against sending your children to university. I commend him for questioning the credo that everyone should go to university, regardless of interest or aptitude. But I am not totally convinced by his analysis. Altucher gives short shrift to the fact that many good jobs require a university degree, even […]
Read moreA superb article in the Toronto Star by Antonia Zerbisias, entitled “Who Are You”, today features a fascinating interview with Dr Jan Kestle at Environics Analytics regarding their use of census data. In the print edition it has a data geek’s centrefold! Two pages of how census data is used to profile 66 different household/lifestyle types that Environics claims typifies […]
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