Upon returning from Montreal, where I volunteered for the NDP on by-election night, I discovered that the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a whopping half point. I do not have a fully-formed analysis of either Mulcair’s victory or the rate reduction, but would like to kick-off some discussion on this blog. Mulcair’s win strikes me as an important […]
Read moreI’ve pasted in below quite an interesting analysis of the current financial crisis, by Pierre Habbard of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD. The Charts have gone missing but are not essential. Financialisation and the “sub-prime†financial crisis – Issues for future regulation TUAC Secretariat Paris, 5 September 2007 The phenomenal growth of the derivative […]
Read moreHuman Resources and Social Development Canada have posted a research report http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/en/publications_resources/research/categories/inclusion/2007/sp_680_05_07_e/sp_680_05_07e.pdf It is no secret or surprise that new immigrants (86% of whom are workers of colour) face more significant labour market barriers than other working-age Canadians, and that they are at greater risk of experiencing poverty. But more empirical detail is always useful. This study uses StatsCan (SLID) […]
Read moreSeveral of us regularly provide media commentary through our jobs at the CCPA, CAW and CLC. Once in a while, reporters quote statements posted on this blog in that capacity. However, the Progressive Economics Forum itself rarely receives media coverage. The excerpts below are from page L4 of today’s Globe and Mail. This story drew upon my “Levitt’s Been Thunderstruck” post.  For […]
Read more“Dion Would Wield Tax Axe to Spur Growth” was the headline in Tuesday’s Financial Post. The story reported that “Mr. Dion said his party would look to cut taxes across the board” but that “He would not elaborate on which taxes he would cut.” However, Monday’s Liberal press release seemed quite clear about which taxes would be on the chopping […]
Read moreErin’s recent post http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2007/09/12/government-size-canada-us/ prompted me to read Ferris and Winer’s interesting piece on the size of government in Canada and the US. The underlying data for the article have been usefully posted by the authors at http://http-server.carleton.ca/~winers/ (You’ll have to find the spread sheet posted at that site under author’s papers, and then look at the sheet for functional […]
Read moreOn Monday, Ontario’s Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity released a paper entitled, Prosperity, Inequality, and Poverty. As Andrew Sharpe pointed out in a review of Jack Mintz’s book, free-market “policy entrepreneurs” often completely ignore the distributional consequences of their recommendations. The Institute deserves credit for trying to grapple with distributional issues (and also for quoting Sharpe extensively). The Institute observes […]
Read moreThere are several interesting articles in the most recent (June 2007) issue of Canadian Public Policy, but the one that grabbed my attention examines the size of government in Canada and the US. Most commentators assume that the Canadian public sector is significantly larger. A few point out that the huge reduction of Canadian-government spending (relative to GDP) since the […]
Read moreStatistics Canada today released a study on immigrants in the job market, based on the recent inclusion of questions identifying immigration status in the Labour Force Survey. It’s no surprise to learn that unemployment levels are significantly higher among recent immigrants. In 2006, the unemployment rate among very recent immigrants (in Canada 5 years or less) was 11.5%, and it […]
Read moreThere’s no question that the Financial Post, as the National Post’s business section, tilts heavily to the right. However, today’s letters section (FP15) could almost have been copied and pasted from this blog. In the first letter, Shalom Schachter responds to the whiny Labour Day op-ed from John Mortimer of LabourWatch. In the second letter, Kris Larson notes that continued […]
Read moreThe Canadian Labour Congress news release follows: Employment statistics: no plan for coming layoffs, Georgetti says OTTAWA – “With so many high profile layoffs announced recently that have yet to come into effect, it is hard to find consolation in the modest employment creation statistics for the last month,” says Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress in regard to […]
Read moreHere’s the link to a major empirical study on the impacts of the Liberal cuts to the Employment Insurance program, with a specific emphasis on impacts on women workers. The study is by Monica Townson and Kevin Hayes and was commissioned by Status of Women Canada , and quietly posted to their web site a couple of weeks ago.
Read moreThe Fraser Institute’s latest study of North American labour markets intends to demonstrate that public-sector employment, minimum wages, unionization, and labour laws that facilitate collective bargaining damage labour-market performance. However, its “Index of Labour Market Performance” measures the quantity of jobs with almost no regard for quality. Even this questionable index is not negatively correlated with the policies criticized by […]
Read moreJanice Kennedy has a pretty good assessment of the Afghanistan debate in today’s Ottawa Citizen. My only slight quibble is that she does not mention the Liberals, who got us into this quagmire.
Read moreHow do we explain the behaviour of the Japanese yen — which has not only avoided the major appreciation (against the U.S. dollar) that other major currencies have experienced (most acutely including Canada’s), but is actually down by over 15% since 2005 (despite Wall Street’s financial wobbles)? Japan has the world’s third largest trade surplus, so if exchange rates reflect […]
Read moreThe following column by Duncan Cameron is from rabble.ca: With the takeover of Stelco by U.S. Steel, Canada loses its last domestically owned steel producer. Despite urgings from the Steelworkers, the Canadian Autoworkers, and the Canadian Labour Congress, our provincial and federal governments have been unwilling to adopt a strategy to provide national direction to natural resource companies, and key industries. […]
Read moreI have just returned from the annual conference of the Canadian Association for Business Economics in Kingston. On Monday evening, we heard from Pierre Duguay, a Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada. Without specifically mentioning Jim’s Globe column, he suggested that some people mistook the Bank’s intervention in financial markets as a deviation from monetary policy’s exclusive focus on […]
Read moreAn interesting article just published by my friend Robert Blecker (American University) reinforces our concerns regarding the long-run impact of the loonie’s recent appreciation on the size and competitiveness of Canada’s manufacturing industry. Here’s the formal citation & abstract: The Economic Consequences of Dollar Appreciation for US Manufacturing Investment: A Time-Series Analysis Author: Robert A. Blecker a Affiliation: a American […]
Read moreHere’s an interesting sidebar to the current hissy fit roiling financial markets: It has turned out that Canada’s public debt is now dangerously low. Huh? We all know that where debt is concerned, private is good and public is bad. That’s why we cheer on consumers as they pump up their indebtedness to a record ratio (over 100%) of disposable income, […]
Read moreA friend just pointed a UN treaty (the International Covenant on Economic, social and cultural rights), to which Canada adhered in 1976, which states that signing parties should strive to tend towards free tuition for post-secondary education. It is in fact one of the “nine core international human rights treaty” (dixit UN website). The relevant article (see provision c) and […]
Read moreA couple of months ago, Robert Oxoby of the University of Calgary posted a joke paper comparing AC/DC’s original lead signer, Bon Scott, with his successor, Brian Johnson. The paper presented the results of an experiment in which test subjects responded less “rationally” to financial incentives in an “ultimatum game” when listening to Scott’s “It’s a Long Way to the […]
Read moreIn April 2006, Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams walked away from proposed Hebron development because the multinational oil companies were not offering sufficient benefits for his province. The national media and federal government heaped scorn on this decision. A couple of days ago, Williams secured a new deal that gives the province a 4.9% equity stake in Hebron, a 6.5% “super […]
Read moreForgive me for greeting the latest financial meltdown with a big yawn. We are facing a combination of two textbook cycles, neatly overlaying each other: 1. Classic speculative cycle:Â something catches the eye of speculators, they drive it up in price in search of (utterly unproductive) speculative profits, the rising price produces a self-fueling speculative bubble, and then something happens […]
Read moreNice to see the Bank of Canada swinging into action the last couple of weeks, pumping many billions of dollars of liquidity into financial markets to ease the sub-prime-inspired credit crunch, and making very hard-nosed statements about its intention to “defend†its desired interest rate regardless of where the markets want to go. Now that’s my kind of central bank. […]
Read moreWhereas Jim Stanford’s latest Globe column argues that central banks should be as willing to intervene on behalf of manufacturing as on behalf of hedge funds, Andrew Coyne’s column in today’s National Post argues that central banks should intervene as little as possible and not bail anyone out. At least Coyne’s position is consistent and avoids the double standard identified […]
Read moreThis post is in response to the following excellent comment from Stephen Moore, the man who will trounce Ralph Goodale in the next federal election (or at least do better than I did): April 2007 testimony before the parliamentary committee on International Trade saw Industry Canada, DFAIT reps and others stress the importance of the SPP (Security & Prosperity Partnership) […]
Read moreTo put some figures on yesterday’s commentary about the social-service download to municipalities and low provincial-income taxes, I checked the latest Equalization tables (which are publicly available from Finance Canada). In 2005/06, Ontario collected $22 billion of personal-income taxes. At national-average rates – an average dragged down by low-tax Alberta and by Ontario itself – Ontario’s income-tax base would have […]
Read morePremier McGuinty has pledged to relieve Ontario municipalities of $1 billion in disability-support payments and prescription-drug benefits if his government is re-elected. Municipalities will continue to pay for a further $3 billion of provincial social-service programs. During the Great Depression, Canada’s patchwork system of municipal relief proved totally inadequate. Subsequently, provincial governments established social-welfare programs and uploaded unemployment insurance to the federal […]
Read moreToday’s National Post includes a letter from BC’s Minister of Economic Development, Colin Hansen, in response to my TILMA op-ed. It is great that the Post has facilitated some debate on this important issue and that the Government of BC feels compelled to participate in this debate. The fundamental point of disagreement is whether TILMA applies to all regulations (but […]
Read moreFor years, Don Drummond of TD Bank has publicly observed that business investment in Canada is lagging far behind soaring profits and called for further corporate-tax cuts to spur investment. He never seemed to perceive a contradiction between the fact that corporations are not reinvesting their record-high after-tax profits and the claim that even higher after-tax profits would boost investment. In a […]
Read more