Paul Jenkins – Building Confidence: The Critical Intersection Of Health And The Economy

Hodgson, Van Dijk – Cornerstones For A Realistic Fiscal Plan

COVID-19’s mysterious budget-killing side effect – Financial Post Op-Ed

COVID-19 is hurting more than our health. It has crushed our economy. And it is straining our governing institutions. A case in point is the federal government’s refusal to table a budget.

The C.D. Howe Institute publishes an annual report on the fiscal accountability of Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial governments. Transparency about taxing, spending and borrowing is fundamental to representative government. Budget votes determine whether governments stand or fall. Legislatures must authorize spending through the estimates process. They need timely, full information to do their work.

The fiscal years of Canada’s senior governments run from April 1 to March 31. Governments that present budgets and…

Glen Hodgson on BNN – PBO projections and the risks of Ottawa’s mounting debt

Glen Hodgson, Fellow-in-Residence at the C.D. Howe Institute, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss how Ottawa might approach the task of paying down the mounting estimated $256 billion dollar debt brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The federal government owes Canadians a fiscal update – Globe and Mail Op-Ed

Parliament is being asked to authorize massive amounts of spending to mitigate the economic damage of COVID-19. To best represent the interests of Canadian taxpayers, who some day will foot the bill, parliamentarians need the best picture possible of the underlying context. That should include a fiscal update.

The Prime Minister rejected the idea of a fiscal update last week, arguing that “in this situation any prediction we make will be widely unreliable from one week to the next.”

Many past updates and budgets, vital to the parliamentary process, would have failed the reliability test.

The infamous 1995 budget, widely viewed as tackling a fiscal crisis and putting the country on a sustainable fiscal path,…

Data Needed for Income Support Transition Planning: Crisis Working Group on Household Income and Credit Support

June 8, 2020 – Better data is required to make informed decisions about an income support transition model, says the C.D. Howe Institute’s Crisis Working Group on Household Income and Credit Support.

At their recent meeting, working group members discussed options for providing continued income support to Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) recipients who, after exhausting their maximum eligibility period, may remain unemployed and without access to Employment Insurance (EI). The group also explored a solution for getting real-time pay information to tackle the administrative challenge of using income-tested support programs, and discussed the potential impact of working from home on young employees and the gender wage…

Don’t Force Canadian Banks To Cut Dividends – Financial Post Op-ed

Banks are often in the political and regulatory crosshairs during times of economic stress, and COVID-19 is no different. Support for the payments system and credit markets can look like support for banks themselves. And supports for businesses are controversial. Few people want to prop up firms with no future and nobody wants government credit or transfer payments to fund executive bonuses or flow to shareholders through share buybacks or unsustainable dividends. Canada’s banks have just reported weak second-quarter earnings. Laurentian Bank just cut its dividend. Should the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) ask other Canadian banks to do the same?

If they did, they would be following a trend. The…

Lori Sterling – The Next Phase Of Economic Recovery, Part Two: Reforming Pandemic-related Programs For Business

Lori Sterling – The Next Phase Of Economic Recovery, Part One: Transitioning Pandemic-related Relief Programs For Individuals

Green, Simard-duplain, Siu – A Covid Assessment Tool To Guide The Opening And Closing Of Sectors

Mariam Ragab – Our Tracker Shows Emerging Signs Of Recovery, But We Are Not In The Clear

Ken Boessenkool – Supply-side Shocks And The Covid Economic Recovery