Op-Eds
Published in the Financial Post
Pierre Poilievre has a slogan for fixing the budget: “pay as you go.” Though less catchy than “axe the tax,” it’s more likely to make Canadians better off. The Conservatives are pledging to balance the budget by reining in spending. A pay-as-you-go law would require new spending to be offset by reductions in existing spending.
Details of the spending cuts and the pay-as-you-go law are promised for the election campaign. Here’s some unsolicited advice on what the platform should say.
To begin with, a pay-as-you go law presupposes the existence of a cap on spending that would force new initiatives to be funded through reallocations. As I discuss in a recent C.D. Howe Institute paper, this…
Published in the Globe and Mail.
The Bloc Québécois is threatening to push for an early election should the minority Liberal government not support a private members’ bill, Bill C-319, which aims to increase the basic amount of the Old Age Security (OAS) benefit by 10 per cent from the current maximum of $718 a month.
The government should not back the bill. And, even if it does, a majority of MPs from across parties should later vote against this bill.
There is political rationale for these responses. Minority governments can be filled with bluster and threats, much of which are empty. And in such governments, strange coalitions may form to pass legislation or to kill certain bills.
Politics aside,…
Published in The Globe and Mail.
Canada is facing a demographic shift that will put immense strain on our health care system and public finances.
We currently have about three working-age (18-64) adults for every senior (65+). By 2067, we will have only two working-age adults per senior. This shift will slow growth in the economy and government revenues while pushing health care expenses up.
The resulting fiscal pressure will be felt across the country, but will be much more intense in some provinces and territories than in others. For example, Newfoundland and Labrador, where the population is aging rapidly and the working-age population is falling, will face especially daunting challenges. Our projections…
Published in The Globe and Mail
The Trudeau government has announced 100-per-cent tariff surcharges on Chinese electric vehicles starting Oct. 1. In doing this Canada will be marching in step with the United States, Mexico and the European Union. As well as hitting EVs, Canada will be applying 25-per-cent import surcharges on Chinese aluminum and steel also following what the Americans have done.
The tool used to impose these surcharges is an almost-never-used provision in Canadian law – section 53 of the Customs Tariff Act. That provision gives the government broad powers to apply these kinds of import surcharges on the joint recommendation of the ministers of Finance and International Trade. While that recommendation must…
Published in the Financial Post
Governments often talk about “creating jobs,” but what they really do is choose some jobs at the expense of others. With their myriad spending, taxing and regulatory decisions, all governments try to direct job growth to different sectors — public or private, services or goods, resources or non-resources, and so on.
We all hope governments choose wisely. It would help if they started paying more explicit attention to one factor: the impact of their decisions on Canadians’ standard of living.
A country’s standard of living is largely determined by the wages and net government revenue its tradeable goods and services sector can pay while remaining competitive against international…
