BC’s recent Budget and Fiscal Plan states total provincial debt is $63 billion. This amount, 62% higher than in 2009, is 27.3% of gross domestic product. Five years ago, the ratio was 18.7%. By any standard, that is rapid debt growth. Unfortunately, those numbers present only part of the story.
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Northern Insight: Why have our trees have lost half their value?
BC Stats released an updated report ‘British Columbia Origin Log Exports’ and I extracted data to produce these graphs. The statistics show the volume of raw logs leaving the province continues at record levels. This demonstrates the average monthly volume of exports over time. I’ve written much about the subject
Continue readingNorthern Insight: Vapourtax
A few tech companies are noted for vapourware, which are products announced with much fanfare that never materialise. In my view, BC Liberal assurances of more than $70 billion new money from 30 years of LNG production is nothing more than vapourtax. These were promises issued solely for marketing purposes.
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Reading Recommendation.
I have a deep respect for Alex Himelfarb, the director of the Glendon School of International and Public Affairs and tireless proponent of responsible, progressive taxation. The latter, as one can well-imagine, likely makes him persona non grata in many circles, but those are likely the same circles that close
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: The Corporate Tax Regime In Canada Is Corporate Welfare
… and it is being done at the expense of Canadians. Corporate Canada Pays Low Taxes But Contributes In Lots Of Other Ways Consider the following: PricewaterhouseCoopers did its own analysis — a survey of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives’ roughly 150 members. It was voluntary and only 63
Continue readingNorthern Insight: Ignorance occasionally has a purpose
Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.” If you’re older than 30, you remember the nineties. Hard times, according to Milton Friedman, were produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Where’s the tax in BC’s carbon tax?
British Columbia’s carbon tax has been getting some high praise lately. A recent article in the Atlantic called it “the crown jewel of North American climate policy”. Such assessments need some tempering. BC’s carbon tax can tell us important things about the limits of fiscal policy today, which in turn
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Published elsewhere: Ontario is no California when it comes to debt
The Toronto Star just published an article I wrote in response to claims made by the Fraser Institute and the Toronto Sun that Ontario has a runaway debt problem worse than California’s. The short version: I call BS. The slightly longer version: California has constraints, such as limits on the
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Flaherty’s Legacy: Ideological, reckless and just plain lucky
This piece was originally published at the Globe and Mail’s online Report on Business feature, EconomyLab. There are two reasons why it is difficult to comment on the legacy of a finance minister. 1) It is a tremendously challenging job, anywhere, any time. Stewarding one of the largest economies
Continue readingcmkl: Flaherty’s legacy? Ideological, reckless and just plain lucky – Armine Yalnizyan
In the people’s republic of Chris, Armine Yalnizyan is finance minister. I really love how she dissects this “Jim Flaherty steady hand on the tiller” narrative that so many commercial media outlets are building now that he’s resigned. I love how she looks at the policies and their effects rather
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: BC proposes LNG tax
I posted this on CCPA’s BC Policy Note blog but others across Canada should pay attention to BC’s quest for LNG gold. I’d also recommend this comparison of the Quebec and BC budgets by Michal Rozworski, which highlights the stubborn emphasis on natural resource development in both budgets. It’s like
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Affordable Housing and Homelesness
This morning I gave a presentation to an church group in Ottawa on affordable housing and homelessness. My slides can be downloaded here. Points I raised in the presentation include the following: -Though government provides subsidizes to some low-income households for housing, it is important to be mindful of the
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Income Splitting Déjà Vu
This blog’s unofficial slogan has been “Tomorrow’s conventional wisdom, today.” After this week’s Conservative backpedaling on income splitting, we may need to change it to “Today’s conventional wisdom, seven years ago.” Or we could just stick with “You read it here first.” My first-ever blog post, Income Splitting Redux, argued that
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Missing In Action: Federal Budget 2014
Here’s the first section of the budget summary and analysis I’ve prepared for CUPE. The full version is on-line on CUPE’s website at http://cupe.ca/economics/missing-action-federal-budget-2014 together with CUPE’s press release at: http://cupe.ca/economics/federal-budget-2014-help-hurt-canadian Missing In Action: Federal Budget 2014 CUPE Federal Budget 2014 Summary and Response Conservatives ignore pressing economic needs with
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Do High Tuition Fees Make for Good Public Policy?
This afternoon I gave a presentation to Professor Ted Jackson’s graduate seminar course on higher education, taught in Carleton University’s School of Public Policy and Administration. The link to my slide deck, titled “The Political Economy of Post-Secondary Education in Canada,” can be found here. Points I raised in the
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The relentlessly hypocritical Gwyn Morgan
Another column by Gwyn Morgan in the Globe and Mail and another case of a 0.1 percenter telling the rest of us to “Do as I say, not as I do.” This time, it’s Gwyn recycling trash from the CFIB and Fraser Institute to claim defined benefit pensions for public
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Capital Gains and the Incomes of the Wealthy
Yesterday’s release from Statistics Canada on the income share of the wealthy generated some interesting coverage and commentary. It reported that the top 1%’s share of total income in Canada remained steady that year in Canada, at 10.6 percent — but still significantly higher than in the 1980s. Most observers did
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Canada’s (not so incredible) shrinking federal government
Buried in the federal government’s recent Update of Economic and Fiscal Projections are figures showing the Harper government is set to squeeze federal government’s role to the smallest it has been in seventy years. (Bill Curry at the Globe also just wrote about this, but without figures further back than 1958). Total federal
Continue readingNorthern Insight: Baksheesh, bustarella, schmiergeld, kuroi kiri
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. – William Shakespeare Organizations that aim to safeguard assets create effective operational and audit controls. They also respect codes of ethics like that of SCMA, a group of professionals working in procurement,
Continue readingNorthern Insight: Subsidies for some, higher fees for others
Despite claims that natural gas will last almost forever and drop massive wealth into BC’s treasury, I’ve demonstrated here, with numbers taken from finance ministry documents, that natural gas production contributes little to BC’s public treasury through royalties. The amount that might otherwise be payable for current production is reduced
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