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November 28, 2017

Canada’s major cities tend to understate revenue and spending, wait too long to release budgets, and confuse taxpayers with obscure figures in their financial reports, finds a new study from the C.D. Howe Institute. In the 2017 edition of the Institute’s annual municipal fiscal accountability report card, titled Fuzzy Finances: Grading the Financial Reports of Canada’s Municipalities, authors William Robson, Benjamin Dachis, and Farah Omran evaluate the country’s 28 largest municipalities on their financial presentations and assign letter grades to each of them.

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.

Benjamin Dachis

Benjamin Dachis is a Senior Fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute. Previously, he served as Associate Vice President, Public Affairs at the C.D. Howe Institute, where he helped further the Institute’s mission to improve Canada’s economic performance by enhancing the visibility, reputation and impact of its research and activities.

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.