Canada’s Breadbasket and the Food Casino
There’s been no shortage of new content on our blog this week. But I write to highlight a couple of interesting reads from other blogs. On The Globe and Mail…
Erin Weir
Japanizing the World Economy
This guest post is from PEF members Marc Lavoie and Mario Seccareccia, both of whom are full professors of economics at the University of Ottawa. The “Japanization” of the World…
Tea Party North
Last week, Travis noted Terry Corcoran’s strained argument that over-regulation of banks is what ails the global economy. Terry’s next column went even further off the deep end, endorsing the…
The Howe’s Overnight Moves Need Work
Less than a month ago, the C. D. Howe Institute released a paper by Michael Parkin, “Overnight Moves: The Bank of Canada Should Start to Raise Interest Rates Now.” The…
S&P Pantsed by US Treasury
I have been reluctant to condemn the credit-rating agencies for sovereign downgrades because it seems like shooting the messenger. As the bond markets have noticed, a few European countries have…
Clemens vs. Clemens
Jason Clemens, who hangs his hat at several right-wing think-tanks (the Fraser, Pacific Research and Macdonald-Laurier Institutes), lauds Canadian fiscal conservatism in today’s Wall Street Journal: Canada’s government, for example,…
TILMA by Stealth in Saskatchewan
The Saskatchewan Party had repeatedly promised not to sign TILMA. But it signed the New West Partnership Trade Agreement (NWPTA) last year. At the time, many commentators (including yours truly)…
TILMA by Stealth
A month ago, Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial governments volunteered to be directly sued by investors under the Agreement on Internal Trade. This quiet announcement from Brudenell, Prince Edward Island,…
The NDP and “Big Labour”
Rob Silver, a sharp guy I first met through university debate, has written a rather disappointing piece entitled, “Would NDP be neutral were it in power during a labour dispute?”…
Rationalizing Corporate Canada’s Cash Stash
Statistics Canada figures indicate that private non-financial corporations held $471 billion of cash in the first quarter of 2011 ($322 billion of Canadian currency plus $149 billion worth of foreign…
Evaluating Tax Cuts: You Read It Here First
Don Drummond has an op-ed in today’s Toronto Star concluding: Federal and provincial governments and the Canadian business sector should monitoring mechanisms that will permit regular reports to Canadians on…
The Benefits of Higher Royalties
The 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…
Mintz is Right on “Small” Business Tax
One 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…
Scheer Success
Andrew 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…
Does Capitalism Save Lives?
I 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…
BC to Raise Corporate Taxes
Amazingly, 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…
Is Canada’s Economy Wage-Led?
The 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…
Do Wages or Profits Lead Growth?
Earlier 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…
How Much Will Harper Cut?
Some progressives worry that the new Conservative majority will dismantle the Canadian state. Hard-nosed economic conservatives like Andrew Coyne and Terry Corcoran worry that the Conservatives will not actually cut…
The Perils of “Strategic” Voting
Several Toronto Star and Globe and Mail columnists have suggested that the Conservative majority resulted from too little strategic voting for the Liberals. In every federal election that I can…