Today (June 15th) the Toronto Star broke news that the NDP was planning to drop the term “socialism†from its party’s platform. This was a mere formality of what had been in existence for decades: the party hasn’t been “socialist†in any shape or form for a very long time. On the very same day, new data emerged from the […]
Read moreToday’s Statscan release “Incomes of Canadians” provides data for 2009 and a partial reading on the impacts of the recession. (I say partial because the 2008 annual average data were impacted by the onset of the recession in the last quarter of the year, and since these impacts continued well into 2010.) The data give some sense of the devastating […]
Read moreHow coincidental that the current number of the Canadian Investment Review arrived in my in-box today, just hours after CAW members at Air Canada hit the bricks to reject the company’s demand to abolish the defined benefit pension plan for new hires (and impose major cuts in pensions for the existing workforce). The demand to eliminate DB plans is a […]
Read moreDon Drummond has an op-ed in today’s Toronto Star concluding: Federal and provincial governments and the Canadian business sector should [establish] monitoring mechanisms that will permit regular reports to Canadians on whether the Canadian corporate tax revolution is producing benefits for them. As an advocate of corporate tax cuts, he believes that such benefits exist. I am more skeptical and […]
Read moreThe Canadian Union of Public Employees has launched a great new blog, Imagine What We Could Do, about the things Saskatchewan should accomplish by raising resource royalties. It draws upon this blog’s analysis of how the province could collect more resource revenue and outlines public expenditure priorities for those funds.
Read moreCAW members at Air Canada are coming down to the wire in their bargaining with the company, with a strike deadline set for this Monday at midnight. It’s really the first “normal” round of bargaining the workers have been able to undertake since 2000. Since then, they’ve been through two rounds of CCAA court-supervised restructuring bargaining, one arbitrated wage settlement […]
Read moreThe ubiquitous Ish Theilheimer of the left-wing on-line news site Straight Goods has written a very generous profile of the Progressive Economics Forum. He hung out at last weekend’s CEA meetings at the University of Ottawa for a while, and caught a few PEF members (including myself, David Robinson, and Brendan Haley) on the way into various sessions. He filmed […]
Read moreAccording to an article in yesterday’s Toronto Star, the Ontario government will create room for 60,000 new students in its colleges and universities by 2015-2016, 10% of which will be for graduate students. (I assume this means that, by 2015-2016, there will be 60,000 more students enroled in Ontario’s post-secondary insitutions than is currently the case, and that 10% of these new spaces […]
Read moreThere is an excellent post by Scott Sinclair at the CCPA blog.
Read moreMachiavelli has nothing on these guys. Let’s deconstruct for a moment the central message of today’s 2011 Federal Budget, Take 2: “Storm clouds are gathering in the world economy. We must rush to get our fiscal house in order, lest we be struck by another tempest. We will advance our own ambitious timetable for balancing the budget by a full […]
Read moreWas it worth the wait? Hardly.  Today’s federal budget is about as appetizing as two month-old pizza warmed up in the microwave. I guess they deserve high marks for consistency, though not for economic policy or a long list of other things. The Harper government’s June Budget is almost entirely a reprinted version of the budget they tabled two and […]
Read more At the CEA meetings I participated on a panel organized by IRPP to discuss a recent paper – by Finnie and Gray – on older laid-off workers and the policy option of “wage insurance.”  The paper shows that older laid off workers leaving stable jobs and finding new employment typically experience significant declines in earnings – in the range of […]
Read moreA guest post from Richard Pereira, a recent winner of the PEF Essay Contest… – Canadian Economics Association – The Town Without Poverty There were hundreds of speakers at this year’s CEA conference in Ottawa. About a dozen of these were designated “Special Lectures/Conférences spéciales†and among them were Jack Mintz on “The GST After Twenty Yearsâ€, Don Drummond on […]
Read moreAt this year’s Annual Conference of the Canadian Economics Association, Armine Yalnizyan gave a presentation entitled “Surviving the Recovery: The Distribution of Canadian Household Debt.” The panel was co-sponsored by the Canadian Association for Business Economics and the Progressive Economics Forum. As Armine made clear in her presentation, household debt in Canada has steadily risen over the past two decades. In 1990, […]
Read moreOne of my main undertakings on this blog has been to debunk Jack Mintz’s relentless advocacy of tax cuts for large corporations. However, I also give him credit when he proposes good policy, such as raising potash royalties and the small-business corporate tax rate. This past week, he was out with a paper on the latter subject. The small-business deduction […]
Read moreAndrew Scheer has been elected House of Commons Speaker. I met him in 2004, when we were federal candidates in adjacent Regina ridings. I was the no-shot NDP candidate against then-Finance Minister Ralph Goodale and he was the long-shot Conservative candidate against veteran NDP MP Lorne Nystrom. At the end of that summer, we were both headed east. I drove […]
Read moreI was watching CNBC and happened to see this panel about how the number of Americans killed by natural disasters has declined over time. It was also noted that, in early 2010, fewer people died in Chile’s earthquake than in Haiti’s earthquake. The discussion quite reasonably outlined how improvements in emergency preparedness, building codes, and infrastructure help to protect people […]
Read moreFinance Minister Jim Flaherty was unusually blunt on CTV’s Question Period yesterday, saying he was worried about the possibility of another recession. (Finance Ministers are usually very cautious about using the “r”-word, for fear that might worry consumers an dbring about a self-fulfilling prophecy.) Maybe he had already seen today’s quarterly GDP numbers from Statistics Canada, which give lots of […]
Read moreToday’s Globe and Mail carried a story on the front of the business section about Jason Underwood, CEO of Whiterock REIT (a real-estate development income trust). He earned $4.8 million compensation last year (an increase of 475% from the previous year), which is especially surprising since the entire fund has a market value of just $373 million. (REITs, like other […]
Read moreAmazingly, BC’s government has joined its official opposition in proposing to restore the provincial corporate income tax rate from 10% to 12%. The same government that cut from 12% to 10% would now reverse itself as part of a last-ditch effort to save the HST. Revenue from a higher corporate tax rate would help finance a lower HST rate. According […]
Read moreI’m in Yellowknife all week attending events relating to the launch of a policy report on homelessness. The report is one of several articles coming out of a multi-year research project looking at affordable housing and homelessness in the Northwest Territories. The project is being supervised by Dr. Frances Abele (Carleton University) and our community partner is Arlene Haché (recent recipient […]
Read moreIt has been widely reported in the Globe and elsewhere that Canada ranks #2 in the just-released OECD Better Life Index, outstripped only by Australia. I am all for measures of objective and subjective social well-being that go beyond GDP as a measure of progress, and this OECD report offers up some useful information. But providing grounds for national chest […]
Read more“Exiting from the Crisis: Towards a Model of More Equitable and Sustainable Growth” is a new book (over 270 pages) now available on line. This volume of essays from global trade union leaders and economists is the product of the Global Unions Taskforce on a New Growth Model, a joint project of the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the […]
Read moreThe parenthetical reference to Canada in my last post prompted several good comments. This post attempts to summarize and address them. Dr. Stockhammer has co-authored a paper with estimates for Canada, but he would be the first to note that they are mechanical and not necessarily relevant to policy. He finds that Canada’s domestic economy is wage-led, with a higher […]
Read moreA shorter version of this analysis appears at the Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab. See article and comments here. Last fall Premier Danny Williams wondered what could drive anyone to let hundreds of millions of dollars slip through their fingers. Last week he got his answer. The Roil report on the 18-month strike at Voisey’s Bay nickel mine in northern […]
Read moreEarlier this month, I served as the discussant for a presentation by Engelbert Stockhammer, an economics professor from Kingston University in London. He was speaking at a conference organized by the workers’ representation to the International Labour Organization (ACTRAV). Stockhammer reviewed two antithetical strategies for economic growth. The pro-labour strategy aims to increase wages by promoting collective bargaining, raising minimum […]
Read moreToday marks the launch of a new global organization committed to plurality and ethics in the economics profession, the World Economics Association.
Read moreI was invited last week to serve as the substitute host for the indomitable Kevin O’Leary on CBC News channel’s “Lang-O’Leary Exchange.” Amanda Lang introduced the show by saying, “Hello, I’m Amanda Lang.” Then I said, “And I am definitely NOT Kevin O’Leary.” And the rest was history! Here’s the link to the full show for your amusement and edification. […]
Read morePEF member Salimah Valiani is now the research economist at the Ontario Nurses Association. Just in time for Mothers’ Day ONA released a most excellent paper by Salimah, titled: Valuing the Invaluable: Rethinking and respecting caring work in Canada  Here is the abstract: Using concepts of feminist economics, this paper demonstrates the range of ways in which carework is […]
Read moreThis article was first published at the Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab. As Parliament resumes after Canada’s historic 41st election, all eyes are on Prime Minister Stephen Harper and how he delivers on his campaign promises of growth and stability. With no encumbrances to its decision-making powers, the Harper majority government will be responsible — and will be seen as […]
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