In recent years the world has experienced a sequence of climate-change-related disasters. Hurricane Sandy comes on top of massive drought through the summer that has led to 40% loss of American corn and other grain crops, raging wildfires in the southeast US, tornados and derechos, etc – and that is just the…
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In a recent interview with the Globe and Mail, Canadian Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty expressed worries about the financial burden laid on taxpayers by having the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) deal and trade mortgages. As a remedy, he suggests privatizing the federal Crown corporation within the next…
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Here is a piece I wrote for today’s Globe Economy Lab re the Department of Finance report on the costs of an aging society. The key point is that the mainstream doom and gloom projections of the costs of falling labour force growth ignore the positive impacts which can be…
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A new report on the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) concludes that the agreement’s benefits for Nova Scotia are being oversold, while its costs and consequences are minimized or even ignored. Indeed, EU officials are in Halifax right now selling the benefits of the CETA for Nova Scotia. Media report…
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Québec has been immersed in the last weeks in much drama following a proposal to further tax the wealthiest. When the brand new Marois government took office (Parti québécois, PQ), it announced it would introduce new tax brackets for the wealthiest. A first bracket would have been added for income…
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There’s reluctance among Canadian proponents to call for it by name. But Right-to-Work (longer, harder, without representation or recourse, for less money and fewer sick days or pee breaks) seems to be the flavour du jour amongst…ahem…politicians of a certain age. (By which I mean the Age of Dickens. Pip-pip,…
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Statistics Canada today revised the national accounts and found Canadians are now more indebted than either the Americans or the Brits were at the peak of their housing bubble. Instead of Canadian households having a debt to disposable income ratio of 154, as was previously estimated, it has now been…
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A variation of this blog post was published in the weekend Huffington Post as part of PEN Canada’s blog series examining freedom of expression for Non-Speak Week. While you’re reading this, about two million employees are busy trying to make our world a little bit better through their work at…
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Today we released a new report by yours truly, BC’s Legislated Greenhouse Gas Targets vs Natural Gas Development: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. It was just five years ago that BC brought in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act, a signal that BC was serious about climate action. The Act calls for a…
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Most Canadians have already heard about the extremely concerning meat contamination at Alberta’s XL Foods. Some have already gotten sick and today the list of beef products being recalled has grown again. The circumstances of how the meat plant closure occurred are also concerning. It appears that US food inspectors…
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