Public Governance and Accountability - Op Eds

Published in The Globe and Mail.

Insolvency laws in Canada (as in the United States, Britain and Australia) have long enshrined the principle that bankruptcy should not assist dishonest debtors. But the Supreme Court of Canada recently determined that fraudsters are able to avoid regulatory penalties from provincial securities commissions by declaring themselves bankrupt.

It is disappointing to have a Supreme Court decision that allows swindlers to insulate themselves from key sanctions – ones that serve to deter wrongful conduct. This cries out for legislative reform.

First, though, how did this happen?

In 2014 the B.C. Securities Commission found Thalbinder Singh Poonian and Shailu Poonian guilty of fraudulent…

Published in the Financial Post 

One reason Canada’s per capita GDP has stalled and may continue to stagnate, putting Canadians’ living standards at risk, is that we struggle to build large projects cheaply and quickly.

The federal government has finally acknowledged there is too much uncertainty in getting major projects approved and has promised certain “fixes,” including recently enacted amendments to its controversial Impact Assessment Act (IAA), which its opponents tagged the “No more pipelines act.” Are those amendments on the right track and will they help get projects built? In our view, no. Instead, we need serious fixes to avoid further litigation and investment uncertainty.

The IAA amendments are a…

Published in the Financial Post

The budgets that show a city’s plans for the upcoming fiscal year and the audited financial statements that report its results after year-end are crucial tools both for the city councillors who steward public funds and for the public that holds them accountable. But, as the C.D. Howe Institute’s latest scorecard on the transparency and accountability of Canada’s 32 largest municipalities reveals, many city budgets remain opaque. They are more likely to confuse councillors and the public than inform them. 

Unlike their budgets, the financial statements of Canadian municipalities are comprehensible even to people who aren’t experts. They present revenues, expenses and the bottom-line…

In the book Zombie Economics, John Quiggin explained how dead ideas – assumptions about market economics refuted by the 2008-09 financial crisis – live on in the minds of many people, including those charged with cleaning up the mess. While not supported by evidence or analysis, these narratives persist as “dead ideas that still walk among us.” Why? Largely because they advance the interests of particular (typically elite) groups who want to believe in them and make them true.

Likewise, corporate governance best practices are typically based on intuition, opinion and rhetoric. Such thinking has been elevated – mandated by regulators and rated by a burgeoning class of governance experts for whom such standards become self-…

The 2023 fall economic statement projected large deficits through 2028-29 and a net debt-to-GDP ratio that rises in 2024-25 and then declines only slightly, remaining well above the prepandemic level through 2028-29. Interest payments eat up almost 14 per cent of revenue. The 2024 budget must correct this imprudent treatment of risk.

Debt’s risk is lost opportunity. When servicing costs rise, more tax dollars have to go toward financing the debt, leaving less room for more meaningful expenditure.

The federal government justified the deficits and debt by showing the net debt-to-GDP ratio declining through 2055-56. This is not credible.

First, high debt produces economic costs, even if sustainable under the narrow…