Canada’s economic context at the time of Election 2011 is one of “precarious recovery”, and overall demand conditions are weakened by a few major factors. Unemployment is still just under 8%, which is good compared to the double-digit unemployment of the early 1990s, but not great compared to the expansions of the late 1990s and 2000s. Too much of the […]
Read moreI did my taxes yesterday and once again was surprised to see how low my family’s income taxes have gone. In 2010, my wife and I paid a combined 13.7% of our income in federal and provincial income tax. Canadian modesty does not permit me to disclose the exact amount of income, but it was under six figures, and about […]
Read moreI missed last week’s federal budget, but was pleased to see the quantity and quality of same-day analysis posted on this blog. Jim wrote an excellent piece, “Corporate Taxation and Investment in the 2011 Federal Budget,†about the corporate tax debate in post-budget media panels. But what struck me was David’s point about how the budget itself did not address […]
Read moreThe 2011 federal budget was clearly designed to fail and provoke an election. It only went part way to meet some of the opposition parties’ priorities while also showering the country with dozens of different politically opportunistic relatively minor spending measures, extensions of expiring programs and boutique tax cuts.  Quite appropriately, it became D.O.A.–and now we’ll soon be into an election. What’s concerning […]
Read moreIf you take a look at this year’s budget and you have an issue that you’re interested in, chances are you’ll find it on the list. There are in fact almost twice as many items on this year’s budget list as the large 2009 stimulus budget. There are some items on seniors, some items on EI, some items for kids, […]
Read moreWith the Alternative Federal Budget (AFB) officially released, you’d think the budget gnomes at the CCPA would have some much deserved time off. Â Unfortunately with the snow still falling in Ottawa, we figured we’d put them back to work. Every year, the AFB puts together ideas from all of the partners involved. Â Once everything is said and done, those ideas […]
Read moreThis piece was initially posted on the Globe and Mail’s online business feature, Economy Lab. Join the comments section! For 18 years I’ve been part of a national project in participatory budgeting called the Alternative Federal Budget. Each year dozens of national and community organizations representing millions of Canadians convene over a six month period, debating and costing out measures […]
Read moreThe tripartite International Labour Organization (ILO) has released it’s flagship 2010 World of Work Report. It offers a useful partial counterpoint to the economic analysis of other international organizations such as the IMF and the OECD. The ILO argues that the employment rate in advanced countries will not return to pre crisis levels until well after 2015, and perhaps not […]
Read moreThere are some interesting if rather subtle differences between the fiscal situation of the federal government as forecast in the last Budget, and that given to us yesterday in the Update. Not much change to the revenue picture, with 09-10 being a bit better than forecast, and next year being a bit weaker than forecast. Debt charges are a bit […]
Read moreThis morning, the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education hosted a Bay Street breakfast meeting with Stockwell Day, President of the Treasury Board of Canada. Jim serves on the Foundation’s Board of Directors, but could not make today’s session. So, Armine and I ended up having breakfast with Tories at Torys. (Some other participants may not have been Tories, but I […]
Read moreIn his column today in The Guardian, Will Hutton is the latest pundit to suggest Canada’s example from the mid 1990s is the right way to tackle austerity. Hutton’s aim is true. He knows the current proposals for balancing the books will unleash “the needless squandering of [British] lives.” In his effort to point to a more sensible path he makes […]
Read moreI have an online opinion piece on the federal government’s “innovation strategy.” My piece focuses on how the strategy directly impacts university students. I argue that the federal government’s current strategy creates winners and losers.
Read moreAlex Usher is a frequent commentator on post-secondary education in Canada. He regularly blogs for the Globe and Mail at globecampus.ca. Yesterday, he wrote an open letter to leaders of Canada’s three major political parties in which he offered advice on post-secondary education policy. I found the following passage to be particularly provocative: First, scratch anything that vaguely resembles a […]
Read moreA guest post from PEF Steering Committee Marc Lavoie of the University of Ottawa: Tax the very rich and solve the PBO problem Among the dozen or so sessions I attended at the meeting of the Canadian Economics Association last week-end in Quebec City, one was devoted to the forthcoming fiscal crisis and another to income inequality. Kevin Page, the […]
Read moreThe Greek crisis has prompted numerous commentators to remark on the dangers of a monetary union which has no common fiscal policy. From the perspective of euro members, the external value of the euro is threatened by large deficits and growing public debt in the so-called PIIG countries, notably Greece and Portugal. There is no effective mechanism in place to […]
Read moreIn the last couple of years, Relentlessly Progressive Economics delivered detailed analysis the evening after the budget by bloggers who had been in the lock-up. Last week, those of us who were in Ottawa dropped the ball. However, Marc picked it up by assessing the budget remotely from Vancouver. My main excuse is that, after drafting USW’s press release, I […]
Read moreI’ve been remiss in not posting information about and links to the federal budget analysis that we did at CUPE, as Paul Tulloch had urged on this blog.  In addition to the press release we issued, there’s an overview and summary that I prepared on budget day, and a dozen really good detailed issue sheets that different CUPE researchers prepared about the […]
Read moreMy post on this past Monday’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) release emphasized the disconnect between profits and investment in the corporate sector. As Andrew commented on that post, the public sector’s contribution to the recovery is also noteworthy. That point seems especially relevant in the wake of a federal budget devoted to continuing previously announced stimulus. The right-wing critique from […]
Read moreAnalysis of the 2010 Federal Budget by David MacDonald, coordinator of the CCPA’s Alternative Federal Budget: If there was any policy recalibration due to prorogation, it was on their photocopier as 94% of this budget’s spending has already been announced. The problem when you photocopy your work is that you don’t learn anything from the process. That is certainly true […]
Read moreThe Budget contains no big surprises but is still a big disappointment. Despite the fact that unemployment is and will remain very high, economic stimulus measures effectively end after this year. A few very small new investments in jobs and skills will be made, but they do not amount to even the beginnings of a strategy to build a new […]
Read moreI did not make it to the federal budget lock-up, and having pored over the document I am pleased to say I missed it. There is very little in this budget that one would expect of a budget in the midst of a recession (the GDP numbers have turned up, I know, but unemployment is still high and could continue […]
Read moreAs if there weren’t already enough reasons to eliminate the egregious stock option tax loophole, a column by Eric Reguly in this month’s Report on Business magazine highlights yet another. This reason helps to explain why we had such a booming stock market up to 2008, but little growth in real investment and productivity. First of all, the stock option […]
Read moreLast Saturday, The Financial Post completed its Chopping Block, a series profiling federal programs that could be eliminated to balance the budget. A couple of weeks ago, the C. D. Howe Institute unveiled its Shadow Federal Budget, which advocated essentially the same approach. (Terry Corcoran deserves some credit for trying to identify quite specific cuts, as opposed to the Howe’s proposal […]
Read moreWe’ve been told for years that corporate tax cuts would work like viagra to boost private sector investment and productivity, and no doubt we’ll hear much more about it in next week’s budget. But it just ain’t working. Today’s release by Statscan of private and public investment intentions shows just how limp private sector investment is expected to be in the coming […]
Read moreIn an important series of columns in the Financial Times, economics editor Martin Wolf has been making the argument that – to avoid a relapse into recession – governments must run deficits so long as the private sector is running large surpluses of savings over spending. “Jumps in fiscal deficits are the mirror image of retrenchment by battered private sectors. […]
Read moreLast week, I argued that discussions about reversing tax cuts should not be limited to the GST. To advance this debate, I have crunched some numbers on corporate taxes using federal budget documents and tax expenditure reports. Budget 2009 (see Table A2.2 on page 255) indicates that federal corporate tax cuts since 2006 will reduce annual revenue by $14.9 billion […]
Read moreStraight Goods contacted me last week for an article about what the federal Conservatives might cut to balance the budget. This concern is understandable given the previous Liberal government’s slash-and-burn approach to deficits. At a minimum, the Conservatives may use the deficit as cover to remove funding from particular programs or organizations that they dislike. However, the Conservatives do not […]
Read moreThe more I read about the Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, the more respect I have for him. He has proven to be an excellent choice for his position, much to the dismay of the Conservative government who created his job in the first place, back in the days when open government was on the agenda. Apparently, Mr. Page has […]
Read moreAs everybody who reads this blog knows, then Finance Minister Paul Martin brought the federal budget back into balance in the mid 1990s by, in significant part, slashing federal transfers to the provinces and eliminating automatic escalators in the new transfers he created. That cannot and will not be allowed to ever happen again, says Canada’s (now not so) New […]
Read moreI blogged recently about the likely pending attack on public service workers. http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2009/11/10/public-sector-workers-the-recessions-next-victims/ This battle will, of course, be fought by right wing (and perhaps not so right wing) governments in the name of “fiscal responsibility”, and justified with reference to the imperative need for “exit strategies” from Great Recession deficits and debt accumulation. The International Monetary Fund staff recently […]
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