The Ontario government is once again touting the wonders of using public-private partnerships (P3s) to build infrastructure. In an update released September 10, Infrastructure Minister Laurie Scott said the province has $65 billion worth of projects in the pipeline to build new transit, expand hospitals and construct a new correctional…
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Canada’s federal government has committed to working towards achieving the goals set out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development both at home and abroad. Yet the scale and scope of investments to date continue to fall considerably short of SDG targets. Implementing the 2030 Agenda requires concrete action and…
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Canadian elections can be staid affairs. For all the talk of big change, campaigns tend to gravitate toward which party can be trusted to “manage the economy.” Trusted by whom? The coveted “middle class” voter, of course. Those at the higher-income end of that group are more likely to vote…
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Between 2010 and 2015, no less than $20.2 billion in budgetary restrictions were imposed by the provincial government in the hopes of attaining zero deficit. During this period, it increased its revenue by $6.2 billion and cut back its spending by $14 billion. Ironically, we learned in the last CAQ budget that the…
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In the aftermath of the USMCA negotiations, the Trudeau government chalked up two significant “wins” for environmental protection and Canadian sovereignty: the elimination of investor state dispute settlement (ISDS), at least in the Canada-U.S. context, and the disappearance of NAFTA’s so-called proportionality clause in the energy chapter. The latter is…
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With Greyhound Canada’s announcement that it will suspend all bus service in Western Canada, the Saskatchewan government’s insistence that the private sector can effectively provide inter-city transportation is looking more and more like wishful thinking. In the wake of the Saskatchewan government’s decision to wind down the Saskatchewan Transportation Company…
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The federal government’s decision, announced this morning, to purchase the existing Trans Mountain pipeline and the pipeline expansion project from Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion is politically risky, economically perilous and, as we’ve said many times before, impossible to justify on environmental grounds. It all looks even worse when you…
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The Invisible Heart, a documentary film exploring social impact bonds (SIB), is currently debuting in theatres across Canada. CCPA Senior Economist David Macdonald and board president Larry Brown were both interviewed for this project. While both spoke of the inherently problematic nature of SIB, we’ve heard from some supporters that…
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The new NAFTA, if we ever get that far, will once again include an energy chapter, despite initial objections to the idea in Washington. This is according to Inside US Trade, which quotes unnamed U.S. officials this week suggesting the chapter could be concluded during the 8th round of talks…
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In the 2015 election the Liberal Party platform stood out by promising to run a deficit in order to provide stimulus to a then slow-growing economy. They promised to spend money to implement new policies aimed at, say it with me, the middle class. The decision to commit to deficit…
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