Back in my home province, a legislative committee has begun a public inquiry on meeting future electricity demand. Written submissions and video of oral presentations are available online. Saskatchewan’s traditional reliance on coal-fired electricity is challenged by concerns about climate change and the prospect of federal charges for carbon emissions. The debate has recently been polarized between proponents of nuclear […]
Read moreOn Thanksgiving, Canadians can be thankful that public stimulus spending propelled a surprisingly strong labour-market rebound in September. This morning’s release shows full-time employment up and the unemployment rate down. However, the jobs picture is not as rosy as these top-line numbers imply. Stimulus Working? The improvement in Canada’s labour market should not be taken as an indication that government […]
Read moreUPDATE (October 20): The transcript of the hearing described below is now available. . . . Late this afternoon, I had the pleasure of serving on a Parliamentary panel composed entirely of members of the United Steelworkers union. My co-panellists before the Human Resources committee were Ken Georgetti, CLC President, and Rosalie Washington, a laid-off worker who would qualify for […]
Read moreI just saw Michael Ignatieff on TV warning that Canada could hit “the deficit wall.†I assume he means “debt wall.†(I would not fault a slip of the tongue, but the written text of a recent speech also incorrectly calls it “the deficit wall.â€) The concept is not that a country hits the wall because a particular annual deficit […]
Read moreI recently questioned whether Tim Hortons’ reorganization as a Canadian corporation would bring any additional jobs or tax revenue to Canada. Aaron Wherry since did something that journalists covering the Prime Minister’s photo-op on this issue should have done: he asked the company directly. Its response is now available on the Macleans blog. Of course, Tim Hortons hopes to expand […]
Read moreI had been girding my loins yesterday, with the release of StatsCan’s July GDP numbers, for another orgy of triumphalist headlines: “The Recovery Is Nigh! All is Good! Stop Worrying! Nothing to See Here, Folks!  Just Go About Your Business!” After all, Chrysler’s two humongous Canadian assembly plants went back to work in July (after a 6-week shutdown as Chrysler went […]
Read moreThere’s a bit of a mystery in the stats Erin and I have been puzzling over. According to the Labour Force Survey, the number of employees in Canada fell by 79,000 in July. According to the Survey of Employment, Earnings and Hours, the number of employees rose by 74,000 in the same month. The methodology of the surveys is quite […]
Read moreFlat Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures for July provide a sobering reminder that the technical end of a recession may not imply a rapid recovery. Output appears to have stopped shrinking, but this morning’s release suggests stabilization rather than growth. Rounding to the nearest billion, all-industry GDP has been $1,184 billion for three months. It had peaked at $1,241 billion […]
Read moreLast week the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) published an update for the G20 Summit on its call from earlier this year for a Global Green New Deal. Â This update showed that Canada is close to the bottom in the stimulus funds it is committing to green economic areas. According to the UNEP, only 8% of Canada’s stimulus spending is […]
Read moreThe first chart in today’s Third Report on the Economic Action Plan (Chart 1.1, page 8 ) appears to show that Canada is tied with Japan for the largest stimulus package in the G-7. Exactly the same bar graph appeared in the Second Report back in June (Chart 1.2, page 12). While this seemingly impressive chart has been promoted to […]
Read moreUPDATE (September 29): Quoted by The Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star, and Canadian Press . . . A recent inquiry for a NOW Magazine article has inspired me to use the July Employment Insurance (EI) figures, released this morning, to examine how this program serves Canadian cities. However, I begin with a national overview of the numbers and […]
Read moreSummary The main result of the Pittsburgh summit was to institutionalize and modestly extend the global economic governance role of the G-20 which arose as a necessary response to the global economic crisis. There is talk of medium-term co-ordination of national macro-economic policies, and a “re-balancing†of the global economy. However, while this is welcome, there is little of real […]
Read moreLast week, the Minister of Finance announced his aspiration to unilaterally eliminate Canada’s few remaining tariffs on imported machinery and equipment. Saturday’s Globe and Mail quoted me doubting this proposal given the severity of Canada’s offshore trade deficit in that area. I elaborate my case in the following op-ed, which is printed in today’s Financial Post with Terry Corcoran making […]
Read moreThe Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a new study today comparing the expenditures of rich and poor Canadians. This approach is interesting because inequality is typically measured in terms of income or wealth. Conservatives sometimes claim that, while temporary fluctuations in income or asset values create the appearance of massive inequality at any given point in time, consumption (and […]
Read moreThe province-wide revolt over BC’s looming Harmonized Sales Tax is reminiscent of protests a generation ago when the HST’s federal parent, the Goods and Services Tax, was born. The rationale for that shift was similar to that of the HST: to switch from an invisible tax paid by producers (the Manufacturers’ Sales Tax) that was passed on to consumers to […]
Read moreYesterday, the Prime Minister’s office put out a press release trumpeting Tim Hortons’ reorganization as a Canadian company as validation of deep federal corporate tax cuts. There was no real news: shareholders predictably ratified a decision that had been extensively reported back in June, when Tim Hortons management described it as “a pretty bland corporate announcement.” Nevertheless, far too many journalists […]
Read moreIn 2003 the the heterodox economics faculty at Notre Dame University were removed from the Economics Department. Now I gather their new home, The Department of Economics and Policy Studies, will be eliminated as well. The story can be found in The Chronicle of Higher Education An interesting analysis appeared today in the Chronicle titled ” Neoclassical Economists on the […]
Read moreCanada likes to think of itself as the country that emerged from the financial crisis squeaky clean. Too bad it is abdicating a leadership role in creating a safer financial system going forward. The issue is bonuses paid to top executives in the financial sector. It looks like the Europeans and Americans have hammered out an agreement to put some […]
Read moreSome pundits have blasted the NDP for voting with the Conservatives in exchange for “a bone,” “crumbs” or “a peanut” on Employment Insurance (EI). Others have convincingly countered that forcing an election right now would not advance EI reform or other progressive causes. Nevertheless, the decision to temporarily support the government deserves further analysis in terms of the EI proposal […]
Read moreMy two kids are still far too young to be farmed out to earn their keep in the labour market, but when they are (in about a decade), I really hope that the value of minimum wages in Canada improves. If not, not only are they going to have to work harder and harder to get by along with millions of others young […]
Read moreJanice MacKinnon’s op-ed on Employment Insurance (EI) in Monday’s National Post read almost as if it had been written before the economic crisis. There was no mention of mass layoffs or rising unemployment, let alone proposals to enhance EI in response to these trends. Instead, she sees the biggest problem with EI as being the supposed drag on labour mobility […]
Read moreThe latest changes to EI to be introduced by the Conservatives do almost nothing for the shock troops of the labour market, those who were first felled when the recession hit last year. Bill C-50 will pass – whether or not it is fast-tracked today or “well-considered†in committee depends on how the procedural tactics imbedded in the bill are […]
Read moreI want to share with everyone a new CAW resource that was produced for our Constitutional Convention (which took place last month in Quebec City). It’s a 4-page cartoon book explaining the core dynamics of financial cycles, that was illustrated and deesigned by Tony Biddle — the awesome Toronto political cartoonist who also illustrated Economics for Everyone. The cartoon book […]
Read more           This week marks the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers: the darkest moment of the global financial crisis, when those in charge genuinely feared for the survival of their system.           This somber anniversary has sparked a modest flurry of retrospection in the media. But the dominant tone (Michael Moore’s new movie aside, of course) has not […]
Read moreThis morning’s consumer price figures for August are reminiscent of July. The annual Consumer Price Index decline was 0.8% (compared to 0.9% last month.) With the exception of July, August was the sharpest drop in consumer prices since 1953. In both July and August, eight of ten provinces posted negative inflation rates. The only province with positive inflation in both […]
Read moreThe OECD released an interesting short report today on how Canada compares to other countries in terms of the job impacts of the crisis. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/62/10/43707194.pdf They project that our unemployment rate will increase by more than in any previous recession to about 10% in 2010 and will likely take a long time to fall. They note a strong link between […]
Read moreLast night, I saw the North American premiere of Michael Moore’s latest movie at the Toronto International Film Festival. Ironically, it was held in the Visa Screening Room, which grants preferential access to bearers of Visa Gold, Platinum or Infinite credit cards. (The unwashed masses who use MasterCard, AMEX or lower grades of Visa waited in a separate line.) While […]
Read moreWith their backs once again to the wall, the Conservatives today announced that they will, at long last, propose additional measures to help the unemployed, something almost everyone inside and outside Parliament has been asking them to do for the better part of a year. They will extend employment insurance benefits by another 5 to 20 weeks for those who […]
Read moreFurther to my post of last week, I note that the Department of Finance Update of Economic and Fiscal Projections shows that the federal debt to GDP ratio will start falling after the next fiscal year … ie from 2011-12…. even though we will be running quite significant fiscal deficits — eg $27.4 Billion in 2011-12. While many media pundits […]
Read moreShould we care that the marginal effective tax rate on capital is higher in Prince Edward Island than in Serbia? Of course, this question is a joke. But the C. D. Howe Institute actually did put out a press release (PDF) last week singling out PEI for its allegedly high business taxes compared to an average of 80 countries, among […]
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