I recently had the joy of spending a couple of weeks in Kerala, the little socialist state at the bottom tip of India. Apart from exquisite food, friendly people, beautiful jungles, and welcoming climate, Kerala’s greatest asset of course is its astonishing record in producing a literate, healthy, politically engaged society — all on the strength of a very modest […]
Read moreMy colleague Bill Rees likes to say that fossil fuels are a powerful hallucinogenic drug. We are all addicted to cheap and abundant fossil fuels, and so have reshaped our economy and society in fundamentally unsustainable ways. In a recent post, I highlighted some research that breaks out of the box of counting emissions only where they occur (the standard […]
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 moreThe Alberta government is reversing its modest increase in conventional oil and gas royalties. Albertans will now receive an even smaller fraction of the value of their resources. The saving grace is that the provincial government did not cut royalties on the oil sands, which are projected to provide more revenue than conventional reserves going forward. Corporate executives welcomed Thursday’s […]
Read moreToday’s Labour Force Survey paints an appreciably improved picture of Canada’s job market. In February, full-time employment rose by 60,000 and part-time employment fell by 39,000. Employers are not only hiring more workers, but also upgrading part-time positions to full-time positions. Almost all of the part-time jobs created in January became full-time jobs in February. Importantly, this employment gain reflected […]
Read moreYesterday, The Winnipeg Free Press ran a column that quoted some material from this blog and some other progressives. The National Post’s blog features the following retort: In her reaction to Budget 2010, the Winnipeg Free Press’s Frances Russell quotes the following: Larry Brown, national secretary treasurer of the National Union of Public and General Employees; Erin Weir, an economist […]
Read morePlease join us in Quebec City this May 28-30 for another round of PEF sessions at the Canadian Economics Association meetings. Here is the tentative PEF line-up for the meetings. Friday, 09:00 – 10:30 PEF I: Was Financialization Rational for Capital? Organizer: Robert Chernomas (U. of Manitoba) -Fletcher Baragar, “Why Financialization, Why Now?†-Robert Chernomas, “From Growth Stagnation to Financial […]
Read moreWhen emissions are reported for the US or Canada, there is an accounting convention that restricts the total to emissions released within the borders of that jurisdiction. This means that Canada’s exports of tar sands oil are counted only to the extent that fossil fuels are used in the extraction and processing, not the combustion of the final product in […]
Read moreLike most economists, I’m big on efficiency. Even in my personal life I tend to group tasks together so that I save time, and I always feel a bit guilty if I retroactively realize I somehow failed to optimize my behaviour. In my recent work on climate change, efficiency comes up in the context of GHG mitigation; for example, a […]
Read moreI have the following op-ed on page A19 of today’s Toronto Star. It reiterates points made before on this blog. The only substantive difference is that I had previously low-balled the annual profits of Ontario’s Crown corporations at $4 billion. Today’s op-ed assumes $4.3 billion, the amount anticipated for the current fiscal year. That assumption probably still understates the value […]
Read moreYesterday afternoon, I caught the subway down to Queen’s Park to find out whether the throne speech would shed any light on the provincial government’s privatization plans. As it turned out, the speech included only a couple of lines on Crown corporations. But I ran into blogger extraordinaire Warren Kinsella at the legislature and note that he has reprimanded Tim […]
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 moreI was pleasantly surprised to see a report published yesterday by Don Drummond and Francis Fong at the TD Bank on the Changing Canadian Workplace.  It provides a short but decent summary of some different issues affecting labour: macro trends, educational requirements, changing composition, women, immigrants, aboriginal Canadians, older workers, widening income gaps, income security, etc.  These are a lot of […]
Read moreToday’s day-after-International-Women’s-Day story in the New York Times by Nancy Folbre links to four indices of gender equity. How is Canada doing? Canada ranks 4th in the Human Development Index (we were number one for eight years) as well as the UNDP Gender Development Index, behind Norway, Australia and Iceland. Norway has been ranked the best country for human development […]
Read moreLast weekend, I spoke at a community event celebrating International Women’s Day in Vancouver. It got me thinking about the status of women in the Canadian economy, reflecting both on the successes over the last half century and on the areas where work is still needed to achieve gender equality. As a young woman in Canada, I have not felt […]
Read moreThis morning, Statistics Canada released Corporations Returns Act data for 2007: Foreign acquisitions of Canadian-controlled firms, particularly in manufacturing and oil and gas, drove a 10.6% increase in Canadian assets under foreign control in 2007. Canadian assets under Canadian control rose 9.9%, led by the depository credit intermediation industry. As a result of these movements, foreign-controlled firms accounted for 21.3% […]
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 moreThe front page of today’s Toronto Star reports, “The Ontario government is looking at creating a publicly held $60 billion ‘super corporation’ of assets such as the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and Hydro One and then selling a minority share to private investors.†It would also include the province’s other major Crown corporations: Ontario Power Generation and Ontario Lottery […]
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 moreI am pleased to announce John Loxley as the winner of the 2010 John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics. John will be joining us in Quebec City during the Canadian Economics Association meetings at the end of May to give the Second Galbraith Prize lecture. Please join us if you can make it! Below is an overview of John’s credentials […]
Read moreThe 2010 BC Budget was a disappointment on the climate action front. Even as Premier Campbell waxed in the Globe about the impact of climate change on the 2010 Spring Games – with its sunny days, crocuses, daffodils and by the end, cherry blossoms making it fun for people on the street but a big mess up at Cypress Bowl […]
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 more[Notes from Marc and Iglika] For a document titled Building a Prosperous British Columbia, the 2010 BC Budget is underwhelming in its ambition. Budget 2010 shows a government talking a lot about the legacy of the Olympics but lacking any coherent vision of how translate upbeat sentiments into real improvements in British Columbians’ standard of living. This budget says “steady […]
Read moreTwo weeks ago I wrote a critique of a very poorly done Conference Board of Canada report on P3s (public-private partnerships).   This conference board study ignored recent major criticisms by provincial auditors general and interviewed almost exclusively P3 proponents. I’m happy to say that two business professors from B.C., Aidan Vining of SFU and Anthony Boardman of UBC,  have recently written an […]
Read more(I wrote the following to circulate to some European colleagues.) Apparently former Canadian Finance Minister and Prime Minister Paul Martin is being tapped by the Europeans for advice on fiscal matters. “Former prime minister Paul Martin, finance minister in the 1990s when Canada’s dangerously high federal deficit was tackled and then eliminated, said Thursday he’s been engaged in “informal” discussions […]
Read moreThe American scholar Alfred Crosby writes of the neo-Europes, the offshoots of Europe, the products of the settling of the New World while unsettling those whose world it already was. James Belich, an historian – who writes like an economic historian – of New Zealand now teaching in Australia, has written a massive and splendid book, Replenishing the Earth: The […]
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 moreCanada’s industrial engine appeared to restart in December. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) expanded by 0.6% that month, led by particularly strong growth in resource extraction, utilities, manufacturing and wholesale trade. December propelled the fourth quarter of 2009 to 1.2% growth, the fastest quarterly growth in a decade. Canada’s Recovery in Perspective While encouraging, the Canadian recovery has been weaker than […]
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