Tomorrow I jet to Toronto for my 20th anniversary high school reunion. Like any such reunion, it will be interesting to see just how far the hairlines have receded and bellies expanded. But I cannot help feeling that my reunion will be different. See, I went to Upper Canada College, our country’s most elite private school. I was an outsider […]
Read moreStatsCan reported last Friday that, based on data from the Labour Force Survey, hourly wages were up by 4.2% September, 2006 to September, 2007, the biggest monthly increase since the Survey began collecting wage data in 2007. With inflation running at 1.7%, it’s no wonder that news of a real wage increase of 2.5% in the context of a national […]
Read moreDuring the provincial campaign, Dalton McGuinty seems to have changed his tune on TILMA. This change is somewhat reminiscent of the Saskatchewan Party’s “road to Damascus” conversion on the issue. Six months ago, McGuinty praised TILMA and mused about joining it. A couple of weeks ago, he wrote the following in response to a questionnaire from the Ontario Public Service […]
Read moreAs the provincial referendum on adopting Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) nears, figuring out strange scenarios in which this voting system might not work well seems to have become Ontario’s favourite indoor sport. All of this hypothesizing appears to be losing sight of the fact that MMP is clearly better (or less bad) than the existing first-past-the-post system. The referendum is […]
Read moreMy take on Statistics Canada’s release follows: The Dollar Hits Parity During the reference period for this Labour Force Survey, September 15 through 22, the Canadian dollar reached parity with the American dollar. Today’s release does not capture the consequences that have begun to play out since then. A rapidly-rising exchange rate has increased the price of Canadian-made products in […]
Read moreHere’s a Freudian slip worthy of the internet age. Go to the home page for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade: http://www.dfait.gc.ca/index.aspx To find their section dealing with free trade negotiations, you go to the menu on the left, under a category titled “Services for Business.” We certainly couldn’t list free trade negotiations as constituting a “Service for […]
Read moreThe United Steelworkers have put out the following press release: Research confirms value of manufacturing to Canada’s economy TORONTO, Oct. 4 /CNW/ – An interim report on manufacturing prepared by Ottawa-based econometrics firm Informetrica shows that manufacturing plays an important role in supporting all sectors of the economy, and has been hurt by both the recent appreciation of the dollar […]
Read moreFor a document that weighs in at close to 500 pages, the federal budget contains precious little information about much of what the federal government does. The revenue side of the ledger is not bad, but the expenditure side is just plain awful. Try it yourself: the 2007 federal budget is here. Now tell me: What is the budget for […]
Read moreThe Government of Saskatchewan announced increases to the minimum wage today as a step forward to providing a living wage that will assist working families and young people participate in our prosperous economy. The increase will take place in three stages that will see the minimum wage move to $8.25 per hour on January 1, 2008, to $8.60 on May […]
Read moreUnder current rules, the EI premium rate is supposed to be set at the precise level anticipated by the Chief Actuary to match program revenues with program expenses. (The accumulated surplus of more than $50 Billion run up under the Liberals as a result of deep benefit cuts and slow premium reductions sits in a sort of accounting limbo in […]
Read moreThe business pages are covering this rather arcane issue more and more intensively. The Canadian market for so-called non bank asset backed commercial paper or ABCP has more or less frozen up, leaving some $40 Billion in stranded assets. Much of this seems to be held by large pension funds and other large institutions, with the Quebec Caisse exposed in […]
Read moreThomas Palley, formerly of the AFL-CIO, just posted a very good piece on “The New Economics of Trade” that clearly connects the dots between several themes frequently discussed on this blog.
Read moreThere have been suggestions that the Conservative government’s forthcoming Throne Speech will surrender the federal spending power. Through an op-ed in today’s Globe and Mail, Bob Rae tries to position himself, and presumably the Liberal Party, as defenders of the power. This posturing will help the Conservatives woo Quebec nationalists and help the Liberals appeal to Canadians who believe in […]
Read moreFrom the New York Times (thanks to Price Tags for leading me there): The blue and yellow sign along Main Street in Ridgefield looked a lot like a historical marker, but something wasn’t quite right. Rather than commemorate a famous person who had stood there, or an event that had shaped history, the marker honored the role of dissent in […]
Read moreLeading Canadian economist Richard Lipsey (with co author Swedenboorg) has written quite an interesting paper for the NBER, “Explaining Product Price Differences Across Countries.” http://www.nber.org/papers/w13239 The abstract reads as follows: “A substantial part of international differences in prices of individual products, both goods and services, can be explained by differences in per capita income, wage compression, or low wage dispersion […]
Read moreFrom Joseph Stiglitz’s NYT review of The Shock Doctrine: Klein is not an academic and cannot be judged as one. There are many places in her book where she oversimplifies. But Friedman and the other shock therapists were also guilty of oversimplification, basing their belief in the perfection of market economies on models that assumed perfect information, perfect competition, perfect […]
Read moreAt budget time this year, Stephen Harper delivered a Paul Martin budget, with more spending than tax cuts. With the release of the Annual Financial Report and Fiscal Reference Tables for 2006/07, we see even more of old blue eyes. Back when this budget was tabled, the projected surplus (mostly earmarked for debt reduction) was $3.6 billion. A year later, […]
Read moreA dispatch from Nick Falvo, the winner of the undergraduate prize in the 2007 PEF essay contest. Nick works for Street Health in Toronto, and speaks to a newly released report: In 1992, Street Health conducted a groundbreaking research study on homeless people’s health and access to health care. The updated 2007 study finds that the shocking rates of violence, […]
Read moreAs usual, the federal surplus has come in far larger than forecast: $14 billion for 2006/07. As legislated through the Tax Back Guarantee, all of the interest savings from this debt repayment will finance personal income tax cuts. Therefore, the 2006/07 surplus will reduce income taxes by $0.7 billion annually. This tax cut will barely put a dent in federal income […]
Read moreCanadian Policy Research Networks have put out what looks like an interesting study. Their blurb follows. The study is at http://www.cprn.org/doc.cfm?doc=1757&l=en Alberta is Canada’s hottest economy. Many Canadians are moving to Alberta drawn by its insatiable demand for skilled workers and professionals. Workers in Low-Income Households in Alberta, prepared for the Alberta Ministry of Employment, Immigration and Industry by […]
Read moreI and David Green from UBC have commented on this topic before. A key question is why we have a program to bring in temporary workers at the prevailing wage, rather than let rising real wages signal job opportuntities and appropriate adjustments in the job market. Bringing in so-called unskilled temporary workers is of concern if such a program works […]
Read moreThis week in Vancouver, the annual meetings of the Union of BC Municipalities are talking TILMA. The BC government signed the deal without consulting municipalities, and it is now in effect. Over the next two years, however, municipalities have an opportunity to seek exemptions from the agreement, although their appeals would go to Economic Development Minister Colin Hansen who would […]
Read moreMy office window looks out over Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, an area notorious for being Canada’s poorest postal code. Back when Vancouver was awarded the 2010 Olympics, we pointed out that the world’s media would be stationed just ten minutes walk away from truly abject poverty, and when the cameras started rolling, it may not be gorgeous mountain backdrops they would […]
Read morehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2177006,00.html An interesting column – roots of the crisis are seen to lie in the continual injections of financial liquidity required to keep growth going in a global economy with a serious underlying deflationary bias, the result of excess capacity in manufacturing. “Merely cutting the cost of borrowing will do little to remedy the long-term weaknesses of the advanced economies” […]
Read moreSeptember 25, 2007 – The NEB decision: 17 jobs in hand and 18,000 in the bush Wed, 09/26/2007 – 09:40 — Fred Wilson (Full post can be found at http://blogs.cep.ca/en/node/53 Readers of this column have by now seen the reports of the National Energy Board decision to approve the Keystone pipeline. CEP has received extensive media coverage of its […]
Read moreYesterday, the Premier of Alberta addressed the Empire Club in Toronto. He said some encouraging things about Our Fair Share: “We will get a fair economic rent on the development of our resources. In fact we have recently received the recommendations of the Royalty Review Panel that I established as one of my first acts as Premier.” I am not […]
Read moreToday, Statistics Canada released a very interesting study on the economic demand that is driving greenhouse-gas emissions. Between 1990 and 2002, exports outstripped Canadians’ personal expenditure as the leading source of Canada’s industrial emissions. Indeed, exports accounted for essentially all of the increase in these emissions. Canadian Industrial Emissions (in megatons) Final-Demand Category 1990 2002 Exports 176.4 264.4 Personal Expenditure […]
Read moreThe Seattle-based Sightline Institute offers this tidy and accessible overview of carbon taxes versus cap-and-trade (in two flavours), with some scoring as to who supports what. Canada’s New Harperment supports none of the options below, and Harper has been on the international stage telling everyone else to be “flexible”. Climate Pricing 101 A primer on cap and trade, carbon taxes, […]
Read moreI spent the morning at Industry Canada’s global supply chains conference. The general tenor of the opening plenaries was as expected – Canadian corporations should slice and dice their supply chains asap to take advantage of lower costs (especially labour costs) in relation to productivity and quality if they are to survive. In a phrase, ‘make Chinese low wages work […]
Read moreStatements like this drive me nuts. This quote is from an otherwise excellent article in The Tyee by Matt Price of Environmental Defence, speculating on the meat for the climate change action bones, expected from BC Premier Gordon Campbell later this week. Price falls into the same simplistic trap a lot of environmentalists get stuck in: On the revenue side, […]
Read more