Before the release of the federal 2023 Fall Economic Statement, we laid out a framework for grading it. We hoped for transparency about the government’s finances, frankness about the economic and fiscal challenges, and a halt to populist tax measures. Sadly, the Statement presented by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland falls short — often far short — on all these priorities.
Our overall grade for the 2023 Fall Statement is a D. It puts dozens of pages of political messaging ahead of the key numbers, avoids the serious challenges that require major shifts in policy and prefigures more of the same fiscal measures that have led to our current plight.
Our grading framework started with a simple request: Cut…
The national conversation about net-zero has tended to focus on renewable forms of energy, such as wind and solar, both of which have important roles to play in future. But nuclear energy and liquefied natural gas (LNG) have also emerged as pragmatic drivers on the road toward a low-carbon future. Each has its own unique advantages.
Nuclear stands out as a reliable source of base-load electricity. Unlike wind and solar installations, which produce much less energy than their rated capacities when, respectively, the wind isn’t blowing or the sun shining, nuclear reactors can operate more or less indefinitely at close to capacity output. That ensures a stable energy supply, offsetting the intermittency associated…
The 2015 federal election heralded a new approach to federal fiscal policy. Serious was out. Spending only as much as revenue would cover was not cool. Unserious was in. Deficits were the new thing.
That was inevitable during the pandemic. For a time, the government could reasonably claim that hundreds of billions of debt-financed spending were needed responses to sickness and lockdowns.
But the COVID measures are behind us. The 2023 fall economic statement from Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday underlines that the federal government is not serious about managing our money. Yet again, the update has revealed previous fiscal projections as meaningless, with tens of billions of new spending layered on…
