Ten guides for grading next week’s federal budget – Financial Post

Canada’s fiscal situation is dire, with bloated spending, excessive borrowing and growth-stifling taxes. Canadians need a responsible federal budget — if not an A-grade fiscal plan, at least a solid B. It needs to do much better than the D we gave last fall’s fiscal statement.

Here are 10 guides we’ll be following in grading next week’s federal budget.

1. Timely release. On this one, a failing grade is already locked in. The budget arrives two weeks into the 2024-25 fiscal year for which it is supposedly the plan and six weeks after the Main Estimates. That means money is being spent without proper parliamentary scrutiny.

2. Cut the spin and give us the figures. Recent budgets have run several hundred pages, but…

Ottawa’s tax-and-spend regime needs an overhaul – Globe and Mail

The federal expenditure management system looks good on paper. Transparency is served by publication of five-year spending plans for major spending categories in the annual budget and detailed information in the government’s main estimates and departmental plans. Efficiency and effectiveness are served by setting objectives for program spending and requiring departments to report on the achievement of these objectives. This result-based management framework is buttressed by requiring most spending programs to be evaluated on a five-year cycle. Transparency is further served by making these reports publicly available.

Dig a little deeper, however, and the flaws become apparent. The first is incomplete coverage of spending.…

Don Drummond on Power & Politics – More Than 200 Economists Signed a Letter Defending Carbon Tax

Stephen Gordon, an economics professor at Laval University, and Don Drummond, a Fellow-in-Residence at the C.D. Howe Institute and adjunct professor at the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University, join CBC’s Power & Politics to discuss the debate on the carbon tax.

Drummond, Robson – There Are No Excuses for April Budgets

What will you get for your tax dollars? The budget should be clear – The Trillium

It’s time for the Ontario government to provide better information to the public on service improvements and cuts and when capital construction projects will be completed.

Budget day is important for the government, but more so for the citizens that the government’s choices will impact.

It’s a time when the information provided to the public, including the media, needs to be presented in a transparent and clear manner. With a finite amount of taxpayer dollars, it’s ever the more important that the public obtain comprehensive budget information to clearly understand how government spending will impact them — in health, education, the justice system and social programs — by virtue of the programming and service level choices…

Garbutt, Harker – Choosing Which “Critical Minerals” Should Be Subsidized Is Problematic

Responsible governments don’t present late budgets – The Hill Times

Along with rampant spending, erratic tax changes, and mounting debt, the federal government is developing another bad fiscal habit: its budgets are getting later.

The government has announced that it will present its budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year, which runs from April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025, on April 16. By then, we will be more than two weeks into the fiscal year. That is too late.

The record of the Liberals under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was somewhat better before that. While only one of the four budgets they delivered from 2016-17 to 2019-20 appeared before March—and not by much: it came out on Feb. 27, 2018—none appeared after April 1. But their overall record is bad. Of the budgets they should have…

Lennie Kaplan – Albertans Concerned with Preserving Fiscal Transparency and Accountability

The Art of Making an Ontario Budget

A look at the deliberation and scrutiny that goes into creating Ontario’s annual spending roadmap, with former Ontario finance ministers Ernie Eves, Janet Ecker, and Greg Sorbara.

Janet Ecker was the first ever female Finance Minister in Ontario, holding the job from 2002 to 2003. She is now a Senior Fellow with the C.D. Howe Institute.

William B.P. Robson – A Cheer for Nova Scotia’s New Inflation Indexing

Godbout, Samoisette – Maximiser le bon d’études canadien en l’offrant à tous les enfants de familles à revenu modeste

Godbout, Samoisette – On Its Anniversary, Has the Goal of the Canada Learning Bond Been Achieved?