Canadians may have recognized by now that our economy has entered a period of structurally slower economic growth, due principally to an aging population. Immediate economic factors often capture the headlines, such as the U.S.-China trade dispute, whether the U.S. Congress will pass the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), high levels of personal debt or higher interest rates. These factors combined have increased uncertainty and reduced the consensus growth outlook for Canada to well below 1.5 per cent in 2019.
Aging demographics and sharply slower growth in the labour force, however, are the real culprits. Canada’s sustainable long-term growth rate has fallen below 2 per cent annually, with growth potential a bit…
On May 9, an expert panel on money laundering issued its report, Combatting Money Laundering in BC Real Estate, in which it estimated 2018 money laundering in Canada at $46.7 billion. In a recent C.D. Howe Institute report, titled Why We Fail to Catch Money Launderers 99.9% of the Time, I estimate money laundering in Canada at $100 billion to $130 billion. Who’s right?
Actually, it doesn’t matter. Both estimates are massive. They sound an alarm for action, and we now turn to our federal and provincial leaders to implement a public registry of beneficial ownership, as recommended by both reports.
Unfortunately, instead of action, some officials have attacked the panel report for its surprising allocation of money laundering…
Other than Donald Trump, no one likes trade wars. And to Canada’s credit, this country has never advocated that kind of policy, supporting instead the attributes of open markets and the rules of the world trading order created in the early post-Second World War days, staunchly foreswearing protectionism and the unilateral action that the Trump White House relishes.
But like it or not, we’re four-square in a trade war with China. Canadians should wake up to that fact and put aside our typical naïveté in the hope that things can be worked out with patience and good faith. Good faith has to work both ways – and there’s little evidence of that from the Chinese side. This means the Trudeau government needs to take a tough response to…
