The Progressive Economics Forum

Almost One in Ten Canadians Experience Food Insecurity

July 16, 2007 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

Some sobering data from the Canadian Community Health Survey http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/surveill/nutrition/commun/income_food_sec-sec_alim_e.html#lex It is recognized that “food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” (Food and Agriculture Organization 1996).Â This report reflects the characteristics of food […]

Foreign Ownership DOES Matter

July 16, 2007 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

I’ve pasted in below a letter to Ministers Bernier and Flaherty re the just-announced review of the Foreign Investment Act and foreign take-overs of large Canadian corporations. Links to the two research studies cited in the letter showing that foreign ownership of large internationally-oriented corporations does matter in terms of impacts on the Canadian economy can be found at the […]

Dark Lord sent to Azkaban

July 14, 2007 Marc Lee Leave a comment

Guilty. The trial is over, or at least this lengthy phase is. The Globe has a good summary of why he was found guilty (see The Independent, too), and an insider look at how the jury made its decision. Below is a (lengthy) retrospective based on various post-trial commentary and analysis in the media, with a focus more on the […]

Taxing capital gains

July 13, 2007 Marc Lee Leave a comment

Asks Paul Krugman: [S]hould we even be giving preferential tax treatment to true capital gains? Iâ€™d say no, because thereâ€™s very little evidence that taxing capital gains as ordinary income would actually hurt the economy. Meanwhile, the low tax rate on capital gains is one main reason the truly rich often pay lower tax rates than the middle class. A […]

Do tax cuts pay for themselves? The evidence from BC

July 12, 2007 Marc Lee 2 comments

Back in the 2001 BC election, the Liberals repeatedly made the voodoo economics claim that “tax cuts pay for themselves” as a means of heading off concerns that their tax cuts would inevitably lead to spending cuts. The Liberals won in a landslide, implemented a 25% across-the-board personal income tax cut and dramatically cut corporate income taxes â€“ about $2.3 […]

Stopping TILMA on the East Coast

July 12, 2007 Erin Weir Leave a comment

The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies has been calling for the Atlantic provinces to join TILMA. Yesterday, I discussed this proposal with the Halifax ChronicleHeraldâ€™s editorial board. The following report was printed in todayâ€™s edition. Also yesterday, the CCPA posted a paper based on my submission to the Saskatchewan Legislative Assemblyâ€™s Standing Committee on the Economy. Published: 2007-07-12 Labour group […]

Why Deflate All of Canada to Deal with Out of Control Alberta Boom?

July 12, 2007 Andrew Jackson 4 comments

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070711.wcomment0712/BNStory/Front/home Asks Michael Mendelson from Caledon

BC’s massive surplus and deteriorating credibility

July 11, 2007 Marc Lee One comment

The spirit of Paul Martin’s budgeting practices lives on at the BC Ministry of Finance. Today, Finance Minister Carole Taylor published the audited public accounts for 2006/07, with a jaw-dropping $4.1 billion surplus, the largest in provincial history. To put this in context, BC’s estimated GDP in 2006 was $179 billion, so the surplus amounts to 2.2% of GDP. Back […]

CIBC on Employment Quality

July 11, 2007 Erin Weir 3 comments

Benjamin Tal of CIBC produces a quarterly Canadian Employment Quality Index. The releases from today (July 11) and February 11 provide amazingly different spins on amazingly similar figures. The basic facts are virtually unchanged: -Â Most new employment has been self-employment as opposed to jobs paid by an employer. – Most new employment has been full-time as opposed to part-time. – […]

Higher interest rates, but why?

July 10, 2007 Marc Lee 3 comments

Despite our protests on this blog, and Erin Weir chaining himself to the central staircase of the Bank of Canada, our hawks at the Bank raised interest rates today. That is, it raised the overnight rate by a quarter point to 4.5%. The Bank’s press release is a bit unusual in that there is no obvious reason why this move […]

The OECD on Why Manufacturing Still Matters

July 10, 2007 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

The OECDÂ have released a modestly interesting, highly empiricalÂ report on the changing nature of the manufacturing sector in advanced industrial economies.Â http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/44/17/37607831.pdf It speaks, somewhat tangentially, to the issue of whether “deindustrialization” should be of concern to policy-makers. As is well-known, the declining share of manufacturing employment has been pervasive across OECD countries since 1970… though the study finds […]

More on the Strange Economics of Temporary Foreign Workers

July 9, 2007 Andrew Jackson 4 comments

Further to my and David Green’s posts on the strange economics of temporary foreign workers .. http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2007/02/08/the-strange-economics-of-temporary-foreign-workers/ http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2007/06/28/the-economics-of-temporary-foreign-workers/Â it is strking to observe that such workers are NOT overwhelmingly concentrated in the Western provinces with well below average unemployment rates. In fact, data presented to an Alberta consultation on the program by the Alberta Federation of Labour show that almost […]

Genetic screening equals public health care

July 9, 2007 Marc Lee Leave a comment

In a number of areas of health care, the rapid advance of technology may pose challenges to public systems, as technology tends to increase to costs associated with care by expanding both the realm of the possible and the number of people who can avail themselves of it (I review some cases of this in a CCPA paper). I argue […]

Regulating Foreign Ownership: A Split in Business Ranks?

July 9, 2007 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

One of the key contradictions of neo liberalism is between the ideology of free markets and limited government, and the reality that transnationals can and do seek to enhance their competitive position in the global order by presenting themselves to ‘their’ home states as champions of national economic development. This contradiction has been relatively subdued in Canada given the supine […]

Tax Subsidies to Private Equity: The Case of BCE

July 6, 2007 Andrew Jackson 2 comments

Today’s Globe and Mail (Report on Business, p. B4) reports that when (technically, if) BCE Inc goes private as a result of the sale to the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan led group, interest-bearing debt will likely rise from $12 Billion to some $38 Billion, according to Chris Diceman of the Dominion Bond Rating Service.Â That would more than triple BCE’s […]

Labour Force Survey and Interest Rates

July 6, 2007 Erin Weir One comment

My assessment of todayâ€™s Labour Force Survey follows: Manufacturing Crisis Deepens â€¢ The loss of a further 31,000 manufacturing jobs in June pushed total manufacturing employment losses to 95,000 positions since the beginning of February 2007. Since employment in Canadian manufacturing peaked in November 2002, this sector has lost 308,000 jobs. Construction and Resource Employment Falls â€¢ In June, CIBC […]

The Bank of Canada and the Dollar

July 5, 2007 Andrew Jackson One comment

The Bank of Canada goes to great pains to tell us that they have only one goal – namely to keep inflation at the mid point of the 1-3% target range – and have no view on the appropriate exchange rate of the Canadian dollar except insofar as it relates to this one goal. This stance is more than […]

Book Review: Intent for a Nation

July 3, 2007 Marc Lee 4 comments

Vancouver political scientist Peter Pronzos emailed this review of Michael Byers’ new book, Intent for a Nation: â€œâ€¦so close to the United Statesâ€ By Peter Pronzos Book review of Intent for a Nation: What is Canada For? By Michael Byers Douglas & McIntyre, 248 pages, $32.95 When former Prime Minister Jean ChrÃ©tien bowed to public opinion and refused to send […]

Competition vs capitalism in Canada

July 3, 2007 Marc Lee One comment

An interesting story in The Tyee that picks up on evidence from the Conrad Black Trial (from a story in the GlobeÂ as blogged here), and runs with it. It is a telling insider story, one that nicely clears up the difference between the notion of competitive markets and the real world of capitalism and Big Media conglomerates: How Black […]

Who’s Better, Who’s Best

July 3, 2007 Marc Lee Leave a comment

The Wellesley Institute blog compares and contrasts a recent CCPA publication with the World Wealth Report: Two days, two reports, two very different worlds The World Wealth Report 2007 released on Wednesday by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini reports that the very rich (so-called high net worth individuals â€“ HNWI) are getting even richer. And the forecast is the extremely […]

Livingstone on congestion charges

July 2, 2007 Marc Lee Leave a comment

Writing an intervention in the NY Times, as NYC contemplates a congestion charge of its own, London Mayor Ken Livingstone makes the case based on London’s experience. A key success factor is the channeling of revenues from the tax into enhancing public transit, another example of offsetting regressive tax impacts on the spending side: … In 2003, London put in […]

Another Decade, Another 4.8%

July 2, 2007 Erin Weir One comment

Itâ€™s great to have publications like The Western Standard keeping us on our toes. The following excerpt is from an article in todayâ€™s edition, “New Economy, Old Prejudices; Big Labourâ€™s jobs campaign flies in the face of employment and wage growth,” that does not (yet) seem to be available online: The CLC contends that Canada’s loss of a quarter-million manufacturing […]

Supreme Court ruling on collective bargaining

July 1, 2007 Marc Lee Leave a comment

A dispatch by email from McMaster’s (and PEF member) Roy Adams on last month’s ruling: In a dramatic and entirely unexpected decision, the Supreme Court of Canada on June 8th “constitutionalized” collective bargaining in Canada. From its inception, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has had a freedom of association clause but in a series of decisions in the 1980s […]

Bruce Johnstone on TILMA

June 30, 2007 Erin Weir Leave a comment

In todayâ€™s Leader-Post, Bruce Johnstone makes the same point as I did about the Saskatchewan Partyâ€™s reversal on TILMA: that it is intended to minimize the agreement as a potentialÂ election issue. He also makes the oft-heard argument that, since a couple of other “free trade” agreements allegedly worked-out fairly well, TILMA must also be pretty good. If the AIT was […]

Stopping TILMA at the Fourth Meridian

June 29, 2007 Erin Weir 4 comments

Count me among those pleasantly surprised by the right-wing Saskatchewan Partyâ€™s rejection of TILMA, a complete reversal of its previous position. I think that labourâ€™s extensive participation in the legislative-committee hearings helped toÂ convince the Saskatchewan Party that (1.) there is significant opposition to signing TILMA and (2.) there are genuine problems with the agreement. During the first week of hearings […]

KPMG on Corporate Taxes

June 29, 2007 Erin Weir Leave a comment

On Wednesday, The Globe and Mail ran the headline, “Taxes Are Falling, But Not Here: Global Business Tax Rates Are Dropping, But Canadaâ€™s Remain High, KPMG Report Finds,” immediately above a table showing Canadian corporate taxes to be within the lower half of G8 countries. Today, The Globe printed the letter from yours truly that is pasted at the bottom […]

More simulations on carbon tax, GHGs and economic impacts

June 28, 2007 Marc Lee One comment

In my post yesterday, I lamented the fact that the Jaccard modeling of carbon tax impacts for the federal government assumed uniform carbon tax rates applied immediately and held constant over time. But in the real world, some phase in period is going to be necessary. Enter the Interim Report of the National Round Table on the Environment and the […]

The economics of temporary foreign workers

June 28, 2007 Marc Lee 5 comments

A dispatch from UBC labour economist, David Green: Wages, Markets and Temporary Workers David A. Green Last November, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) announced a scheme to speed up the processing of temporary workers for Alberta and British Columbia. The Minister appears to have been concerned with ongoing reports of large numbers of job vacancies going unfilled. […]

Wage and profit shares

June 28, 2007 Marc Lee Leave a comment

The CCPA released a study today by PEF steering committee members Ellen Russell and Mathieu Dufour. Rising Profit Shares, Falling Wage Shares is the published version of research they presented during the PEF session on ineuquality, at the CEA conference. The full study is available here and the press release says: Canadaâ€™s economy grew steadily and workersâ€™ productivity improved by […]

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