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August 13, 2020

COVID Threatens Governments’ Fiscal Accountability

  • Many of Canada’s senior governments have made impressive progress with the transparency and accessibility of their financial presentations, but these gains are under threat from the COVID pandemic.
  • In the C.D. Howe Institute’s annual report card on the accessibility, timeliness and reliability of governments’ financial documents, the authors assign grades that reflect how readily an interested but non-expert user may find, understand and act on the information therein.
  • While many governments have made reporting improvements over recent years, the failure of the federal government, as well as Newfoundland and Labrador, to produce budgets this spring shows that Canadians cannot take these improvements for granted.
William Robson

Bill Robson took office as CEO of the C.D. Howe Institute in July 2006, after serving as the Institute’s Senior Vice President since 2003 and Director of Research from 2000 to 2003. He has written more than 270 monographs, articles, chapters and books on such subjects as government budgets, pensions, healthcare financing, inflation and currency issues.

Farah Omran

Farah Omran is a former Policy Analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute. Farah joined the C.D. Howe Institute in 2017, while completing her Master of Arts in Economics from the University of Toronto. As a Policy Analyst at the institute, she worked on a wide range of topics, including monetary policy, financial services, and fiscal accountability.