COVID-19 has put much of Canada’s economy on life support. As we emerge from the crisis and resume more normal activity, a challenge awaits. We do not want viable businesses to disappear. But we also do not want zombie firms to live on indefinitely.
Early in the crisis, governments reasonably prioritized supporting households and businesses through central banks, government lenders and transfer payments. Going big and broad made sense to help us survive the sudden stop.
We now need to navigate a different problem: letting firms go. In an ordinary year an amazing number of businesses in Canada appear and disappear. In 2017, 143,000 businesses came into existence — about one for every eight that already existed. That…
We talk about saving the world from COVID-19. We also need to talk about saving global bodies like the World Trade Organization. Last week’s announcement of the early departure of WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo creates an opening for some reassessment of its future role.
Once considered a paramount achievement in global institution-building, the WTO has been in difficulty since the Doha Round of negotiations collapsed over a decade ago. Endless squabbling among governments over its agenda and the recent paralysis of its dispute-settlement system as a result of U.S. stonewalling has only made things worse.
Now comes COVID-19, unleashing new tensions in international trade. On the one hand is the need to keep supply…
The Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) was an early and critical element in the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. The government first announced the CERB in late March, promising $2,000 a month for up to four months for workers who have lost their incomes as a result of the pandemic. In mid-April, it expanded eligibility to make the CERB available to people earning up to $1,000 per month and to workers whose EI benefits had run out.
Widely praised for providing immediate income support and helping contain the coronavirus by reducing pressure on lower-income people to work, the CERB made sense in an emergency. With attention increasingly turning to reopening the economy, however, the CERB is becoming a…
