Brian Lewis - With an election on the horizon, Ford should resist the allure of costly new policies
Published in TVO Today.
Ontario's forthcoming fall economic statement has garnered increased interest as speculation mounts over a potential provincial election in spring 2025. While the FES is traditionally a routine update on the province's fiscal and economic status, this year's seems likely to serve as a platform for early, strategic pre-election policy announcements. Look no further than the reporting that emerged last week indicating that the government is poised to send out cheques worth at least $200 to every Ontarian.
Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy will deliver the update on October 30, two weeks earlier than is legally required. Amid signs of economic and fiscal improvement, the province faces…
Published in the Financial Post
Canada has not had a bank failure in over 30 years. But banking is changing, and so bank regulation may need to change, too.
Bank runs can now cripple an institution in a matter of hours, not days. Deposit insurance can no longer be counted on to prevent such runs. And a very different regulatory environment has emerged in the wake of the global financial crisis. Last year’s sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in the U.S. and slower demise of Credit Suisse in Switzerland are examples of crises Canadian regulators might struggle to cope with if something similar happened here.
As banking evolves away from the system that existed in the last century, the risk of bank runs is likely to…
Published in the Financial Post.
The crisis in Canada’s primary care is reaching a breaking point. A staggering 6.5 million Canadians are without a family doctor or nurse-practitioner (NP). A recent C.D. Howe report by one of us (Zhang) calculates we would need at least 7,844 more family physicians to meet current demand — an increase that could take up to a decade to achieve. With the population both growing and aging, waiting that long simply isn’t an option. It’s time to explore alternative solutions. More NPs should be one of them.
The International Council of Nurses defines nurse-practitioners as integrating “clinical skills associated with nursing and medicine in order to assess, diagnose and manage patients”…
