Is the federal government thinking of limiting the foreign assets Canadians can own through their pension plans and RRSPs? Rumours to that effect are spreading among Canada’s pension plans and investors.
The rumours are plausible. As a recent C.D. Howe Institute report documents, business investment in this country has been so weak that capital per worker has actually been falling. That deadens productivity growth, which causes living standards to stagnate. A government that puts populist intervention ahead of principled economic policies, as this one often does, might want to force Canadian savers to invest more in Canadian assets.
How might it do so? Pension funds and other institutional investors have a…
Why are Canadian governments so slow to release budgets and public accounts? - Globe and Mail
Nicholas Dahir is a research assistant at the C.D. Howe Institute. William Robson is chief executive of the C.D. Howe Institute.
Among the most grating and persistent failings of our governments is that they are too slow. Too slow building things, too slow issuing permits and passports, too slow processing taxes, too slow even answering questions.
Less obvious in our daily lives, but troubling on a deeper level, is how late Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial governments are in presenting their budgets and public accounts. The C.D. Howe Institute recently released its annual report card on the clarity, reliability and timeliness of these documents. Our findings on timeliness alone reveal major problems…
Beyond tightening, where is the end point of the Bank of Canada’s monetary policy? - Globe and Mail
The Bank of Canada once again held its policy rate at 5 per cent on Wednesday, as expected.
After two months of disappointment, with the annual change in the Consumer Price Index ticking up in July and August, inflation resumed its descent in September, falling to 3.8 per cent from 4 per cent. That, plus weak economic numbers, made it practically certain – confirmed by the expectations of financial markets – that the central bank would hold.
The real questions concern the bank’s end point for monetary policy in the medium term and what that means for Canadians.
The bank is probably at the end of its tightening cycle. But this doesn’t mean interest rates are coming back down to where they were before…
