In recent years, municipal employees’ wage growth has constantly outpaced other unionized sectors. Since wages, salaries and benefits make up more than half of the operating expenditure for most municipalities in Canada, ever-growing municipal wages are putting pressure on local public finances.
The evidence of fast-growing municipal employees’ wages can be found in the comprehensive data on collective bargaining covering 500 or more employees provided by Employment and Social Development Canada. Wage growth of municipal employees has significantly surpassed inflation in most years: municipal employees saw an average real wage growth of 0.53 per cent a year since 2011. In contrast, non-municipal public-sector workers…
Now that some time has passed since the surprising Supreme Court of Canada decision in the Comeau case, it’s worth reflecting on some of the concepts enunciated in that judgment in upholding New Brunswick’s ban on cross-border beer imports.
The central issue in that case, of course, was whether Section 121 of the Constitution was breached by the New Brunswick law under which Mr. Comeau was charged. Section 121 says: “All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall . . . be admitted free into each of the other Provinces.”
Note that the words are “shall . . be admitted free.” Section 121 doesn’t say “duty free” but “free” — full stop. That word would in a normal sense seem to mean…
This week’s review of the Ontario government’s pre-election financial report from the provincial Auditor-General reconfirmed what The Globe and Mail reported last weekend: The government is using an accounting trick to shrink its reported deficit and debt. It is hiding the cost of borrowing to subsidize electricity prices over the next few years by inventing an “asset” – revenue from the higher prices Ontario’s electricity consumers will pay later on – to keep the borrowing from showing in the government’s bottom line.
Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk’s review concludes that the pre-election report is not a reasonable presentation of Ontario’s finances. Her concerns deserve wide attention – not just in Ontario, but…
