Search Results

While public debate has mainly focused on the “gold-plated” defined benefits of many public-service pension plans, the real problem lies in a flawed approach to managing compensation costs, according to respected pension expert Malcolm Hamilton.  In, “Evaluating Public-Sector Pensions: How Much Do They Really Cost?” Hamilton says the problem is government sponsors who typically underestimate…

Published in the Financial Post on July 27, 2015 Lawrence L. Herman, founding partner at Herman & Associates, practices international trade law and is a Senior Fellow of the C.D. Howe Institute in Toronto. Americans provide billions in protectionism to dairy that will have to be given up for trade deal. We rail against Canada’s supply management system. Rightly so. It’s a Soviet-style regime…

Published in the Financial Post on July 16, 2015 By Thorsten V. Koeppl and James MacGee Thorsten V. Koeppl is Associate Professor and RBC Fellow, Department of Economics, Queen’s University; and Scholar in Financial Services and Monetary Policy, C.D. Howe Institute. James MacGee is Associate Professor of Economics, Western University, and a Research Fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute.…

Canada’s buoyant housing market, with lots of new construction, booming renovations, and a torrid pace of transactions, has been a good news story in a year that had too few. But as underlined in a recent FP article called “The housing boom that never ends,” the news on housing has been a little too good. Meanwhile, other business investment – in non-residential structures, machinery and…

Published in the Financial Post on Dec 16, 2010 By Jan Carr and Benjamin Dachis In attempts to stimulate the creation of “green” jobs and technologies, some jurisdictions around the world have created programs that guarantee renewable electricity generators payments per kilowatt-hour (kWh) that are much higher than market prices. This approach of paying a premium to certain generators to…