The following is a guest post by the Alberta Federation of Labour’s Tony Clark: A labour shortage occurs when the demand for labour exceeds the supply of labour, right? Well, apparently not in Alberta. The Alberta Federation of Labour took a long hard look at the Government of Alberta’s projections showing an astronomical labour shortage of 114,000 workers by 2021 and […]
Read moreAgrium reports that it paid half as much to the people of Saskatchewan in the second quarter as it had in the same quarter of last year. The company’s quarterly “potash profit and capital tax†payment dropped to $8 million from $15 million a year ago. Agrium’s only potash mine is in Saskatchewan. The value of its potash sales has […]
Read more“Making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg. It may seem hot to you,but it never does to anyone else.” Cited in Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (2012)
Read moreThe latest issue of the Canadian Tax Journal has a number of articles on Tax-Free Savings Accounts. Among the papers of interest: Kevin Milligan projects the potential tax impact of accumulated TFSA contribution room by estimating what a mature TFSA would have meant for income taxation in 2005. Even short of doubling the contribution limit to $10,000, Milligan finds a […]
Read moreAs we know, Dutch disease is about damage to industry from resource exports. As we witness the widespread drought this summer in North America and the damage to crops, Dutch disease needs to be redefined to also include the damage to agriculture. The Canadian West eats its own as it produces oil.
Read moreThe China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s (CNOOC) bid to acquire Nexen is a large and complex proposal. Canadians should call for a more thorough and transparent review than other foreign takeovers have received under the Investment Canada Act. A preliminary outline of possible costs and benefits follows. The Downside: Chinese Consumer Interests A company like Nexen aims to sell oil […]
Read moreToday’s Consumer Price Index provides further evidence of Saskatchewan’s rising cost of living. Among the provinces, Saskatchewan is tied for the second-highest annual inflation rate: 2.0%. Consumer prices decreased in June from May in nine provinces (all except Alberta). But Saskatchewan was tied for the smallest monthly price decline: -0.3%. Compared to the rest of Canada, Saskatchewan residents experienced nearly […]
Read moreIt’s been an unusually hot summer, and soaring temperatures have boosted sales of that quintessential summer food, ice cream. But Baskin-Robbins has decided to shut its production facility in Peterborough, Ont., and lay off 80 workers because of…wait for it… increased demand! From the department of “wait, what?”, here’s the scoop behind this brain-freeze-inducing decision. Baskin-Robbins, home of 31 flavours […]
Read moreThe just-released OECD Employment Outlook – full text not available on line – has an interesting chapter on the sharp decline of labour’s share of national income in virtually all OECD countries over the past 30 years, and especially the last twenty years. The median labour share in the OECD fell from 66.1% in the early 1990s to 61.7% in […]
Read moreToday, Statistics Canada reported that 3,400 more Canadians received Employment Insurance (EI) benefits in May. It previously reported that unemployment rose by 8,000 that month. In other words, even more workers are now unemployed without EI benefits. In total, just 37% of unemployed Canadians received benefits in May (i.e. 512,600 out of 1,378,600). This proportion was as low as 26% […]
Read moreToday’s Mosaic quarterly report provides further evidence that the Government of Saskatchewan should improve its royalty and tax structure to collect a better return on the province’s non-renewable resources like potash. Quarterly Comparison Despite higher potash prices, Mosaic paid lower royalties and resource taxes to Saskatchewan last quarter than in the same quarter of last year. In the three months […]
Read moreAt yesterday’s Saskatchewan Roughrider game, Premier Wall announced provincial funding for a new stadium: an $80-million grant and a $100-million loan to be repaid over time through a surcharge on tickets. While it’s unclear why a stadium should be anywhere near the top of the priority list, a readiness to invest in public infrastructure is positive. The province could generate […]
Read moreWith all the predictions of doom and gloom coming from the austerity camp, one would think that Canada was already about to hit the famed (but never seen) “debt wall.” Before we get too carried away, however, with the scary debt stuff, consider these two indicators of the fundamental fiscal fragility/stability of Canadian governments. The first figure shows the net financial […]
Read moreAs a follow-up to my last post, where I showed R7 – the unemployment rate that includes involuntary part-time, I was curious what the longer term trend was regarding youth and part-time employment. As you can see in the graph below, the proportion of 20-24 year olds engaged in full-time work has steadily fallen since 1980, accelerated during recessions.  This is […]
Read moreLast week, Conservative MP Randy Hoback had another letter in The Prince Albert Daily Herald blaming the NDP for the pulp-mill closure in 2006. He still has not addressed my main point about resource royalties. I have the following response on page 4 of today’s Herald: Pulp mill saga proves Mulcair’s point Notwithstanding MP Randy Hoback’s repeated use of the […]
Read moreIn the summer months, Statistics Canada collects labour force data on students who were attending school full time in March, and who intend to return full time in the fall. The unemployment rate for these students rose compared to June of last year. The June 2012 unemployment rate for students 17-19 was 17.3% (up from 13.8% in June 2011), and […]
Read moreCanada’s labour market stagnated again in June. Employment edged up by only 7,000 as the working-age population grew by 30,000. In response to this job shortage, 17,000 Canadians dropped out of the labour force. Canada’s economy is not generating nearly enough jobs to keep pace with the number of available workers. The good news is that employers replaced 22,000 part-time […]
Read moreIn case anyone was wondering about the effectiveness of right to work laws in suppressing unionization, here is a chart of Union coverage rate by State (the percentage of all employees that are covered by a collective agreement) as of 2010.  Right to work states have an asterisk, and are outlined with a black dotted line. (Chart updated, original scale was wrong). […]
Read moreOccasionally we can still get a glimpse of the radical difference between modern and pre-modern concepts of time. A significant number of Marshall Islanders have migrated to the U.S. According to a recent story in the NY Times (july 4): “They puzzle over the American obsession with time…” The principal of an Arkansas school where 30% of the studenst are […]
Read moreFurther to my recent post on the Ontario PC party’s proposal for right-to-work laws in that province, here is a slightly longer version of my column in today’s Globe and Mail:
Read moreJust in time for Canada Day, the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business issued its annual Top 1000 rankings of the thousand largest publicly traded companies (by assets) in Canada (ranked by profit). I blogged about this last year as well. It’s such an interesting snapshot of Canadian business it’s worth perusing. Once again, this listing reveals the extent to which […]
Read moreFurther to Jim’s post on the recent ratcheting up of the war on unions, I note that Hudak’s lead argument is that voluntary union membership is needed to “make unions more responsive to unionized employees.” (p6) “Labour laws” it is alleged “have given union leaders substantial power with little or no accountability.” (p9) The basic idea seems to be that […]
Read moreThe main story in today’s GDP numbers is that the oil, gas and mining industries rebounded sharply in April after being hobbled by temporary maintenance and production difficulties in February and March. While the upswing in fossil-fuel and mineral extraction was large enough to boost the overall economy, other key sectors showed signs of weakness. Manufacturing looked like a bright […]
Read moreIt’s clear we’re going to have to gear up our arguments on right-to-work laws, dues check-off, the Rand Formula, etc. In the last year three mainstream parties have introduced proposals for right-to-work style legal changes in Canada (Brad Wall’s Saskatchewan Party, the Wild Rose Alliance, and now yesterday Tim Hudak’s Ontario PCs). This used to be terrain solely inhabited by the […]
Read moreFurther to my earlier post on the OECD and “Dutch Disease”, I have received a heavily redacted response to an access to information request (A-2012-00073/CN.)Â submitted to the Department of Finance, seeking any comments on the draft assessment and recommendations of the OECD delegation to Canada in 2012. This arrives just as Conservative ads attack the “risky economic theories” of […]
Read moreSmall business – or at least the CFIB – consistently claim to be the big job creators in the economy. This has never been borne out by the available data on net job growth by firm size. And Statscan has now added to our knowledge by releasing a new paper and new CANSIM data today. The paper looks at the […]
Read moreWell well, another misinformed tax freedom day has come and gone on June 12th. To mark the occasion this year I wanted to skip over the very serious methodological flaws that others have pointed out, and take a look at several other items that Canadians are “free of” at various points. By gaining “freedom†from the taxes that Canadians pay we also […]
Read moreLast week, Conrad Black launched a $1.25-million libel lawsuit against me, Random House of Canada and its editors over four sentences in my book “Thieves of Bay Street†that discuss his case. You can see the National Post article here about the suit: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/06/22/conrad-black-suing-publisher-for-1-25m/ While I won’t argue the merits of the suit on this blog at this time, I […]
Read moreToday’s report that the national inflation rate fell to 1.2% in May deflates calls for higher interest rates to reduce inflation. The central bank’s core rate was 1.8%, also below the 2% target. The other argument for an interest-rate hike was to moderate mortgage lending and the housing market. However, the federal government’s move to reign in mortgage lending through […]
Read moreSeen in isolation, Finance Minister Flaherty probably did the right thing yesterday in seeking to safely deflate the housing bubble and lower the dangerous growth of household credit to a record level as a share of household income. But he did it very late in the game, and risks tipping an already very fragile economy into recession if he and […]
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