Canada’s immigration point system is designed to select for skilled individuals who have the potential to contribute to our country’s economic growth and meet its evolving labour needs. Since the mid-2010s, it has yielded improvements in the overall labour market outcomes for immigrants.

However, recent policy changes warrant immediate attention – especially as the role of skilled immigrants has become increasingly vital. Compared with similar countries, it’s evident that there are several missed opportunities and systemic challenges hindering our immigration system from reaching its full potential and enhancing the well-being of all Canadians.

Canada and Australia, in particular, share similarities in their skilled…

Nova Scotia’s budgets do not always make national headlines, but the one recently delivered by Minister of Finance and Treasury Board Allan MacMaster got some well-deserved attention. It indexed the province’s personal income tax to inflation. Starting next January, the thresholds for all Nova Scotia’s tax brackets and its non-refundable credits for spouses and dependents will rise with the consumer price index each year.

As Alexandre Laurin and I argued in a recent C.D. Howe Institute report, this move is long overdue. Price surges during the pandemic reminded everyone that inflation and taxes are a toxic combination. Governments that tax nominal amounts even when inflation is eroding money’s purchasing power dodge…

Federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has announced that the 2024 federal budget will be delivered on April 16. That is more than two weeks after the April 1 start of the budget year: fiscal 2024-25.

Late federal budgets have become a pattern. The 2023 budget was delivered March 28 – just three days ahead of April 1, and nowhere near early enough for Parliament or anyone else to even consider the fiscal plan before the year started. In both 2022 (April 7) and 2021 (April 19), the government also failed to get the budget out before the new fiscal year began. Go back a year earlier, and the situation was even worse. There was no budget.

It should be clear: Timely budgets with their tax and expenditure plans are good.…