Wall Strikes Out on Fiscal Federalism
Saskatchewan’s Brad Wall recently issued a statement exhorting his fellow Premiers to blaze largely unspecified new trails on healthcare, Employment Insurance and Equalization. Unfortunately, he misses...
View ArticleGDP Turns Negative
Statistics Canada reported today that the economy shrank in November for the first time in six months. This decline was driven by reduced energy production, which partly reflected maintenance shutdowns...
View ArticleEvidence vs. Ivison
If the National Post’s John Ivison wanted to agitate this blog’s authors, he could not have done much better than last week’s commentary on the census numbers. It was printed on the front page under...
View ArticleDrummond: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
The Drummond Commission reported today. The Good While the McGuinty government prevented the Commission from considering tax rates, it proposes some sensible measures to raise revenue. Chapter 18,...
View ArticleDebunking Drummond
The Drummond report claims that Ontario is headed for a $30-billion deficit. This figure has been widely and uncritically reported. For example, The Globe and Mail printed four articles featuring this...
View ArticleProvincial and State Corporate Taxes
The following commentary also appears on The Globe and Mail’s Global Exchange blog: What Obama’s Corporate Tax Proposal Means for Canada Last week, there was much consternation in Canada’s business...
View ArticleWhat To Do About Dutch Disease?
In response to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s complaint about oil and the exchange rate, several (conservative) commentators argued that this “Dutch disease” is not what ails Ontario manufacturing....
View ArticleInflation Central
Statistics Canada reported today that consumer prices edged up by 0.1% in February on a seasonally-adjusted basis, bringing the annual inflation rate to 2.6% and the core inflation rate to 2.3%. These...
View ArticleOntario Budget Emulates Drummond
Perhaps the most striking feature of today’s Ontario budget is how close it comes to last month’s Drummond report. Drummond’s preferred scenario for 2017-18 was $134.7 billion of provincial revenue,...
View ArticleBudget 2012: Pennywise But Pound Foolish
Marc, Andrew and Toby have posted substantial analyses of yesterday’s federal budget and I have some comments in today’s Hamilton Spectator. My two cents about the budget’s economic forecasts follow....
View ArticleLockouts Almost Derail GDP Growth
Statistics Canada reported today that economic growth dropped to a bare 0.1% in January. The New Year began with Rio Tinto locking out former Alcan employees at Alma, Quebec, and Caterpillar locking...
View ArticleOntario to Mine for More Revenue
Last week’s provincial budget promised a mining sector review “to ensure Ontario receives fair compensation for its non-renewable resources,” a proposal advanced by this blog and the United...
View ArticleReal Unemployment Rate = 11.3%
Statistics Canada reported significant employment growth today for the first time in six months. As Andrew has already noted, welcome strength in March does not make up for the five preceding months of...
View ArticleSK Budget: Where’s the Inter-governmental Love?
A hallmark of Brad Wall’s premiership has been cosy relations with municipal governments and the two westernmost provincial governments. Since taking office, the Sask. Party has been throwing money at...
View ArticleBMO Professor vs. Bank Regulation
Last week, the C. D. Howe Institute was out with an op-ed contending that Canadian household debt is not worth worrying too much about: “There does not seem to be a strong case for restrictive...
View ArticleNeil Reynolds’ Fuzzy Tax Math
If you need help with your tax return, don’t ask Neil Reynolds. His latest attack on the New Democrat proposal to collect modestly more tax from Ontario’s super-rich stated that “the province’s highest...
View ArticleOpting Out of Union Dues
Murray Mandryk’s excellent column today saves me the trouble of writing a lengthy blog post on the Saskatchewan government’s recent musings about labour legislation. From an economic perspective, it’s...
View ArticleCorak in Context
Professor Miles Corak had a post on The Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab yesterday comparing measures of unemployment in Canada and the U.S. I remember learning in Economics 100 that the official Canadian...
View ArticleGoing to the Wall in Defence of Mulcair
I have the following op-ed in today’s Saskatoon StarPhoenix: Royalty hike cure for Dutch disease Premier Brad Wall calls federal NDP Leader Tom Mulcair “very, very divisive” for expressing concern that...
View ArticleJobs: Ontario Left Behind
Statistics Canada reported today that April was another good month for the labour market. The Canadian economy added 58,200 jobs, most of which were full-time and all of which were paid positions...
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