In Vancouver, June 6-8, the Progressive Economics Forum will be holding five panels at the annual meetings of the Canadian Economics Association. In addition we will be awarding the new John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics for the first time (more to come on this). We would like to thank the CEA, who last year provided us a grant to […]
Read moreA new release from Statistics Canada on infrastructure finds that: In the public sector, infrastructure is primarily concentrated in schools, hospitals, roads and water mains. In 2002, about one-third (34%) of assets were devoted to transportation in the public sector, unchanged from 1970. About 26% were devoted to recreation, culture and education, 13% to health and social protection and 11% […]
Read moreThere is good news today, but ample reason for caution looking ahead Canada’s job market continues to surprise. Despite a strong drop in economic growth in late 2007 and recognition this week from the Bank of Canada that a US downturn will spill over into Canada, employment rose by 43,000 last month and the unemployment rate held steady at 5.8%. […]
Read more The CLC today released – on the eve of International Women’s Day – a major report on women and economic equality.  I’ll be presenting it at the PEF meetings in June. The report flags a question which is not posed often or clearly enough – why has the pay (and wider opportunity) gap between women and men stopped closing over […]
Read moreNational Post Dinosaur-in-Chief Terence Corcoran has nothing but bile to spew at the David Suzuki Foundation and its recent report on carbon pricing. With characteristic bombast, he still seems to think that global warming is a vast left-wing conspiracy to overthrow capitalism. But Terry is right about one thing. All of the modeling for greenhouse gas reduction scenarios comes from […]
Read moreMark Weisbrot and his colleagues at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Analysis have just released a report that estimates the economic impact of a U.S. slowdown on the Americas, including Canada.   They estimate the impact simply through trade adjustment, assuming in the low adjustment scenario that the U.S. trade deficit falls from 5.2% of GDP in 2007 to […]
Read moreThe New York Times has an article today about how, unlike households, American corporations are piling up cash. Unlike most American consumers, whose failure to save has exasperated economists for years, the typical American corporation has increased its savings so sharply that it probably has enough cash on hand to completely pay off its debts. While I haven’t looked at […]
Read moreThe good news is that the Bank of Canada today matched the maximum market expectation of them, a half point cut in the target for the overnight rate. They even suggested that further interest rate cuts are in store. “Further monetary stimulus is likely to be required in the near term to keep aggregate supply and demand in balance and […]
Read moreI am glad that Jim Flaherty’s budget did not actually come through with a rumoured exemption for capital gains income. Recall that the Conservatives’ 2006 platform had promised a ridiculous and unworkable exemption from income taxes on capital gains so long as the winnings were “re-invested.” This high-profile broken promise still clearly niggled the Harper government, and expectations were high […]
Read moreIn working on the CAW’s recent submission to the Red Wilson panel, I did a bit of work to debunk the common argument that the growth of the “services economy” can somehow offset the damage that is occurring these days to our manufacturing sector and other tradeable industries. Here is the link to our full submission (which is introduced in […]
Read moreI want to encourage folks to look through the CAW’s detailed submission to the federal government’s panel on competition policy (headed by Red Wilson). Here is the link: http://www.caw.ca/whoweare/CAWpoliciesandstatements/pdfs/CompetitionInvestmentPanel.pdf I think it’s a major statement about the structural transformation occurring in Canada’s economy as a result of the global commodity boom.  Basic summary: high global commodity prices have boosted the […]
Read moreI recently took a crash course in the fascinating, challenging economics of municipal finance. I was one of the 6 members of the independent panel that was formed to review the City of Toronto’s fiscal situation. The panel issued its report last month. Most progressive economists have long recognized the growing economic importance of cities, and the urgent need for […]
Read moreAnd so, as we recover from Tuesday’s budget and recoil at the spectacle that is the Cadman affair, let us all pause and mark this moment for it may be the last of an era, one we may come to know as the “pre-PBO” era, an era where, in the context of contrived “budgetary scarcity,” the political goal is to […]
Read moreStatistics Canada revealed today that, in the fourth quarter of 2007, we ran a current account deficit for the first time since 1999. It is difficult to get a handle on what pushed us into deficit because the raw and seasonally-adjusted numbers paint quite different pictures of quarterly changes. The raw numbers indicate that, from the third to the fourth quarter, […]
Read moreI’ve posted below some interesting comments from Richard Shillington, a senior associate at Informetrica Ltd – who among many other accomplishments has drawn attention to very high effective tax rates on low income Canadians, and the failure of many programs to reflect the realities of life in low income. I think Richard advances a good alternative solution to a real […]
Read moreSeveral articles in today’s Globe and Mail assume that the US Democratic Party’s desire to renegotiate NAFTA threatens Canada. On the contrary, Canadians should welcome this initiative. Senators Clinton and Obama have called for limits on the ability of foreign investors to directly challenge public policy under NAFTA’s notorious Chapter 11. Canada has been the victim of more such challenges, […]
Read moreIf anyone had any doubt…
Read moreI want to piggy-back very briefly on Marc’s post from Tuesday (and update yesterday) which suggested that the proposed Tax-Free Savings Account won’t “promote investment” like the government says it will (see page 76 of Budget). The empirical literature I’ve seen certainly supports his argument — most corporate investment is financed from retained earnings, which in turn suggests that consumption, […]
Read moreThe federal Budget kicked in a rather hefty $240 Million subsidy to a proposed new SaskPower coal-fired power plant that will demonstrate CCS technology. Perhaps this is a good thing which should be welcomed – climate change activists sound vaguely impressed – but I wonder if we should be so heavily subsidizing CCS, as opposed to forcing it on power […]
Read moreUsually when expectations are lowered it is so that they can subsequently be exceeded. So budget watchers were all wondering in the past few days what the surprise in this budget would be. Alas, the surprise is that there is no surprise. As expected we got a do-nothing budget, albeit one with a glossy cover of a child waving a […]
Read moreFinance Minister Jim Flaherty set very low expectations for the Harper government’s third budget – and managed to deliver even less.     There is nothing in this budget for public health care, childcare, poverty or homelessness, very little for the environment or for Aboriginal Canadians, nothing for working Canadians, nothing for women, nothing to improve public pensions, no long-term solutions for […]
Read moreThe government has announced in the Budget that it is creating a new, independent Crown Corporation, the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board (CEIFB) to manage a separate EI bank account, and to set premiums from 2009 on. This responds to employer concerns re paying EI premiums which are “too high” as opposed to worker concerns over access to and the […]
Read moreThanks Adrew, Erin, Marc for the nice budget analysis. Far from my mind to take people’s attention from it but while I was listening live to its delivery on CBC, I remembered an article I had read a couple of weeks ago on Cyberpresse (sorry, in French, am looking for the English counterpart). It stated the results of a survey […]
Read moreExcellent analysis by Marc and Andrew leaves me with relatively little to add. The Steelworkers and NDP made many of the same points. Budget 2008’s minor new investments in public programs will amount to only one-sixth the value of recent corporate tax cuts during the next fiscal year. Budget 2008 (Table 1.1, page 10) proposes $1.4 billion of new spending […]
Read morehttp://canadianlabour.ca/index.php/budget_analysis/1339
Read moreI’ll post a fuller analysis later, but here are my notes from the lock-up: What We Got – An Overview of Conservative Priorities The centrepiece of the Budget is a new tax exempt savings vehicle which begins small, but will ramp up over time to eventually remove a high and rising proportion of investment income from income tax. It will […]
Read moreJeffrey Simpson really loves Gordon Campbell. Having done a series of columns on BC’s carbon tax, its clever political packaging and the leader behind it – all in all, not a bad set of columns – Simpson completely loses touch on the health care side of the provincial budget. He buys hook, line and sinker the arguments about the lack […]
Read morehttp://www03.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/b2c/catalog/z_getpdf.jsp?pdfkey=2913653764704560038976021471679303982482875120909016402/65901.pdf CMHC have published a joint study with StatsCan on the dynamics of housing affordability, 2002 to 2004. Affordable housing is defined as paying more than 30% of household pre tax income on shelter costs. Annually published cross sectional estimates show that about 20% of Canadians were paying too much for housing in any given year over this period. This […]
Read moreRichard Ziegler has recently written and published a book called “Reclaiming The Canadian Left” which is worth a read. For details see http://www.richardziegler.ca/ He argues that the Canadian left has largely renounced economic equality as a goal. I’m broadly sympathetic to his argument that the left has indeed abandoned the radically egalitarian vision which Ziegler espouses, and he did touch […]
Read moreEverybody seems to think that next week’s federal budget will be a pretty boring, stay the course, “prudent” document because there is almost no room for fiscal manouevre. I wonder. True, there is next to no surplus left for 2008-09 due to the big Conservative tax cuts made last Fall. But Flaherty is still sitting on top of about a […]
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