The meeting of G20 Labour Ministers in Paris on September 26-27, held in advance of the November G20 Summit in Cannes, reached some conclusions which go some (extremely modest) way toward living up to prior G20 commitments in London and Pittsburgh to promote quality jobs and a more progressive labour market model as part of a long-term solution to the […]
Read moreToday CCPA released a new Climate Justice Project report, Fighting Energy Poverty in the Transition to Zero-Emission Housing: A Framework for BC, by yours truly, Eugene Kung (a lawyer with the BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre and a steering committee member of the CJP) and Jason Owen (who worked on this project as a student at UBC, now with the City of Surrey). The full report as […]
Read moreToday’s Globe and Mail (page B15) mentions the PEF in a story on the corporate sector’s record-breaking accumulation of cash, a subject about which we have often blogged. Corporate Canada has tripled its cash stash in each of the last two decades. The following Statistics Canada figures are “Canadian currency and deposits†plus “Foreign currency and deposits†for private non-financial […]
Read moreToday’s Ottawa Citizen (page A15) features the following op-ed on Ontario corporate taxes. I have added links to references. I recently discussed this issue on TV Ontario: Corporate Taxes are Low Enough By Erin Weir, Ottawa Citizen, September 27, 2011 Corporate taxes are a major dividing line in Ontario’s election campaign. Liberals and Conservatives would slash the provincial general corporate […]
Read moreToday, the Ontario NDP presented its comprehensive platform costing, including all policies announced during the election campaign. A popular theme among commentators has been that platform costings are unrealistic given the deteriorating economic outlook. As Andrea Horwath noted, her platform includes significant contingency funds. It is also cautiously built on the fiscal framework set out in the 2011 provincial budget. […]
Read moreOn Wednesday, William Watson wrote a comment piece in the Financial Post in which he was critical of Armine Yalnizyan’s recent essay on inequality. In his piece, Mr. Watson alleges that Armine “is guilty of fantastical reminiscence,” particularly with respect to her take on post-secondary education (PSE). Among other things, Mr. Watson points to the fact that PSE enrolment has […]
Read moreThere’s an interesting new research report from Statistics Canada, by Ping Ching Winnie Chan, Rene Morissette, and Marc Frenette, profiling the workers who were displaced in the recent recession, and comparing the outcomes to previous recessions in earlier decades (the downturns of the early 1980s and 1990s). “Workers Laid Off During the Last Three Recessions,” part of StatsCan’s Analytical Studies […]
Read moreOver at the Globe and Mail Economy Lab our friend Stephen Gordon argues that there are only limited revenues to be gained by taxing the rich. He plays around with some back of the envelope calculations based on CRA data on the incomes of those making more than $500,000 – accurately enough, I think -Â and concludes that each percentage […]
Read moreThe IMF World Economic Outlook notes that the desired process of rebalancing global demand from countries with large trade deficits (notably the US) to countries with large trade surpluses (notably China) is not going very well. Relatedly, it points out just how difficult it is for increased demand in developing economies to offset stagnant or falling demand in the much […]
Read moreThis essay was commissioned by the National Post. It was published in today’s edition under the headline “A Problem for Everyone“. In the print edition, the overline - a large font summary of what you are about to read written by the editors – reads: “Income inequality isn’t just unfair — it threatens the whole foundation on which our capitalist […]
Read moreI am attending the G20 labour ministers meeting next week, which is being held against the background of high unemployment in the advanced economies, and the prospect – highlighted by the IMF yesterday – for unemployment to increase even further in the months ahead. A key union demand – that the G20 establish an ongoing working group on employment and […]
Read morePollsters tell us that Ontario’s New Democrats may double their seat total in next month’s provincial election. It’s also entirely conceivable that they could be part of a coalition government at Queen’s Park. But what’s actually in the party’s election platform? One central feature of the NDP’s proposals is to implement a tax credit for companies that hire new workers. The tax credits would be valued at […]
Read moreFurther to my earlier post on Recession Ahead?, the IMF have today sharply revised down their forecasts of Canadian growth – from 2.9% to 2.1% in 2001, and from 2.6% to 1.9% in 2o12. The downward revisions for Canada compared to June, 2011 are just about the largest for the advanced economies, second only to the US in 2011. Canada’s […]
Read moreI was sorry to miss a celebration of the life and work of Ian Stewart organized by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards last Friday night. Ian was a former senior economic official back in the now distant days of Keynesian dominance, including a stint as Deputy Minister of Finance which will be forever associated with the introduction […]
Read moreIf you are interested in what BC’s new Premier Christy Clark is doing on the job creation front, check out a couple articles on the BC Policy Note blog (here and here). Like the Dance of the Seven Veils, the Jobs Plan is being revealed piece by piece over the next few days, and today is just Day One. Because […]
Read moreThis Ontario NDP fact check should warm the hearts of economists, accountants and math teachers everywhere: Are Liberals Smarter Than a 5th Grader? The Ontario Liberals put out a release with this erroneous secondary headline: “NDP K-12 plan amounts to just 0.0009% of total education budget.†To calculate this figure, they divided $20 million by the province’s 2011-12 education budget […]
Read moreLast March, Keith Dunne and I wrote an opinion piece on Danny Williams’ post-secondary education (PSE) legacy in Newfoundland and Labrador. Among other things, we pointed out that average undergraduate tuition fees (for domestic students) in Newfoundland and Labrador are $2,624/yr., compared with $5,138 for Canada as a whole and $6,307 in Ontario. With a provincial election slated to take place in Newfoundland and Labrador on […]
Read moreIn August Canadian Business magazine published my article on why inequality is bad for business. It is produced in full below. Last week the International Monetary Fund, not known for left-leaning views, released a series of articles entitled “Why Inequality Throws Us Off Balance”. One of the papers is by Andrew Berg and Jonathan Ostry entitled “Equality and Efficiency: Is […]
Read moreThe Labour Force Survey for August showed that average hourly wages were up by just 1.4% from a year earlier, the same low level of increase as was registered in July. Consumer price inflation was 2.7% in July, a bit down from 3.1% in June and 3.7% in May, but it seems that we have entered a period of falling […]
Read moreScott Sinclair writes cogently on the CCPA blog about the current edition of the Buy American debate. We had somewhat different views of the 2010 Canada-U.S. Agreement on Government Procurement. However, I certainly endorse Scott’s conclusion that the Canadian government should be strengthening public investment here rather than just complaining about proposed public investment south of the border. What strikes […]
Read moreThere is a cogent commentary from Martin Wolf in today’s FT. It is scary indeed that averting financial collapse demands structural changes in the euro area which seem to be politically impossible to achieve.
Read moreThe C. D. Howe Institute is out this morning with a press release entitled, “Raising Oil and Gas Royalties Does Not Benefit Provincial Coffers.†A complete analysis of the accompanying 30-page paper – featuring many graphs, tables and regressions – will take time. But here is my initial take. Background The Institute correctly notes that provincial oil and gas revenues […]
Read moreAn Ontario election is slated for October 6, and the reigning Liberal Party will attempt to pull off a third consecutive majority government. In that vein, the Liberals have recently made a slew of campaign promises in the post-secondary education (PSE) sector. Notably, they’ve committed to reducing undergraduate tuition for “middle-class Ontario families” by 30 percent, amounting to “$1600 per student in […]
Read moreFurther to Jim’s excellent critique of the Ontario Conservative platform’s graphs, I am similarly struck by the Liberal platform’s lone graph. “Cutting Ontario’s Taxes on New Business Investment in Half†(page 25) purports to show that corporate tax cuts are required to get the province’s “Marginal Effective Tax Rate†below the US and OECD averages. It compares projections of those […]
Read moreThe Ontario election is in full swing, and the Conservative party’s campaign is guided by a platform booklet called the “changebook.â€Â It’s an audacious manifesto for significant change in the policy and the philosophy of government in the province, mapping out a long agenda of measures to cut taxes, balance the budget, privatize government assets and agencies, get tough on […]
Read moreA recent editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal looks at the use of “grade-boosting” stimulants (such as Ritalin) by Canadian post-secondary students. According to the editorial: “Universities and colleges are ground zero for ‘grade-boosting’ stimulant abuse.” The thrust of the editorial’s argument is that universities and colleges need to work proactively to reduce the misuse of such substances, including by […]
Read moreThe UNTCAD just published its annual report on Trade and Development, titled Post-crisis Policy Challenges in the World Economy. The report describes a two speed global recovery, showing how developing economies have come out of the crisis stronger then their developed European and American counterparts. There the author invokes the contradictory forces at work in a “wageless” recovery, where wage […]
Read moreLast week, the CCPA released a paper by David Macdonald and Erika Shaker entitled Under Pressure: The Impact of Rising Tuition Fees on Ontario Families. The paper does a good job of explaining which households have been most impacted by rising tuition fees in Ontario. Points made in the paper include the following: -In light of rising levels of household debt, Canadian […]
Read moreThe Canadian Association of University Teachers represents 66,000 university and college teachers, academic librarians, researchers and staff at more than 120 universities and colleges in Canada. Their 2012 brief to the Federal Finance Committee contains some useful numbers. I was particularly interested to see their data showing decreased funding to Canada’s federal granting councils. Using constant dollars, the brief spells out that, over the past five years, the […]
Read moreIn light of plans by the Charest government to increase tuition fees in Quebec by 75 percent over the next five years, Eric Martin and Simon Tremblay-Pepin have written a recent article on Quebec tuition fees. The article points out the following: -Though tuition fees in Quebec have been lower than in most other parts of Canada, this has come with […]
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