Canada, with our flagrant public spending, could benefit from a debt ceiling – Globe and Mail Op-Ed
Nobody likes the U.S. debt ceiling, it seems. If the recent deal to raise it does not pass both houses of Congress, the U.S. government will soon be legally unable to borrow. Within weeks – perhaps days – it will have to slash spending. It may default on already-outstanding debt. A financial crisis and recession could follow. What’s to like?
There is one thing. The ceiling periodically brings U.S. political leaders face-to-face with their fiscal profligacy. Granted, they respond with partisanship and brinksmanship. They talk about gimmicks, such as minting a trillion-dollar coin and forcing the U.S. Federal Reserve to buy it with newly printed money.
Those leaders will not meaningfully address the chronically…
Let’s try arbitration instead of public service strikes – Financial Post Op-Ed
High and unpredictable inflation has made labour negotiations more difficult. The recent strike by more than 150,000 federal public servants is but one illustration. Lasting 12 days for most affected workers and two weeks for 35,000 Canada Revenue Agency employees, it brought into focus an issue all Canadian governments need to address, and quickly: What methods can they use to ensure critical municipal, provincial or federal public services continue without interruption, and at a tolerable cost to taxpayers? I believe they need to make more use of binding arbitration.
Several decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada, particularly in Saskatchewan Federation of Labour vs Saskatchewan in 2015, have created new…
The Unspent Funds in Canada’s Major Municipalities
Canadian municipalities collect some revenues in advance of the outlays they will fund. This money, typically shown as flowing into reserves in municipal budgets, appears in financial statements as “deferred revenue.” Deferred revenue is a liability. It means the funds are dedicated to a certain purpose and/or a certain time. An important source of this […] Don Drummond – Bogus Spending Restraint is not Spending Restraint
From: Don Drummond To: Canadian Budget Observers Date: April 12, 2023 Re: Bogus Spending Restraint is not Spending Restraint The 2023 federal budget rests its case for fiscal discipline, even restraint, on promised savings in operating expenses that amount to billions of dollars. Key budget passages include: “Budget 2023 proposes to reduce spending on consulting, other professional services, and travel by […] Canadians Deserve Access to More Transparent City Budgets – Op-Ed from The Globe and Mail
City budgets are a mystery to most Canadians. The municipal services they fund are central to our quality of life, and they affect our property taxes and charges for services such as water access and garbage collection. Yet few of us delve into these seminal documents that lay out plans for revenue and expenses for the coming year – and if we do, we likely come away bewildered. Canadians need and deserve more transparent city budgets.
If you have not yet peered into the murk of municipal budgets yourself, we encourage you to visit your own city’s website and search for its most recent budget. We are now well into March, so your municipality’s 2023 budget should be online. If it is not – the lateness of many city budgets is a…
Shadow Budget 2023 with Bill Robson and Don Drummond
In episode three of the C.D. Howe Institute Podcast, we ask what should Federal Budget 2023 look like? According to the C.D. Howe Institute’s CEO Bill Robson and Fellow-in-Residence Don Drummond, Ottawa needs to reign-in spending or risk re-accelerating inflation. But what about climbing debt loads, a healthcare system in crisis, and the constant march of climate change?
La gouvernance doit-elle devenir woke? – La Presse Op-Ed
La réponse à ma question provocatrice dépend du sens donné à l’expression. Non, si on considère la caricature faite par la droite dure aux États-Unis. Oui, si on retient l’orientation d’un rapport sur l’avenir de la gouvernance d’entreprise au Canada.
Si on redonne au mot woke son sens « d’éveillé », à l’évidence il y a longtemps qu’on demande aux administrateurs de ne plus dormir au gaz. Mais on s’attend maintenant à ce qu’ils « s’éveillent » à un plus large éventail de questions sociales et environnementales.
La gouvernance d’entreprise réfère à l’ensemble des règles et des comportements d’un conseil d’administration, notamment sa relation avec le PDG pour établir la stratégie et en…
Robson, Dahir – Wake Up Cities, Your Budgets are Late (Again)
From: William B.P. Robson and Nick Dahir To: Canadian Taxpayers Date: January 5, 2023 Re: Wake Up Cities, Your Budgets are Late (Again) The festive season should be a time to look back on work well done. In far too many Canadian cities, however, one key task remained incomplete. Canadian municipalities outside Nova Scotia run on a calendar […]Duncan Munn – A New Year’s Resolution: Let’s Embrace Realism
From: Duncan Munn To: Canada’s Political Class Date: January 4, 2023 Re: A New Year’s Resolution: Let’s Embrace Realism The New Year traditionally arrives with resolutions and a fresh start at self-improvement. Here’s a simple suggestion for all political leaders: Embrace more realism in public policy. Let’s look at five areas in which Canada has clear goals, but falls […]A New Year’s resolution for politicians: Let’s embrace realism – Financial Post Op-Ed
The New Year traditionally arrives with resolutions and a fresh start at self-improvement. Here’s one simple suggestion for all political leaders: Embrace more realism in public policy. Let’s consider five areas in which Canada has clear goals, but falls short of realistic plans to achieve them.
First, inflation control. Fiscal authorities must not add more fuel to the inflation fire with new spending even as the Bank of Canada wields its interest-rate hammer. Ottawa needs to show more realism about its spending ambitions. Inflation control is a whole-of-government responsibility. After years of record-breaking spending and deficits, we need a credible plan to improve the nation’s finances and ensure that the…
Federal Spending Keeps Soaring with Each Fall Statement
Successive fiscal updates from the federal Minister of Finance since 2019 show projected federal spending growing by leaps and bounds, even after COVID-related measures drop out of the projections. The government’s last pre-COVID projections, in its 2019 fall economic statement, showed federal spending of $421 billion in the 2024/25 fiscal year, the last year in […] Forget ‘prudence’ and ‘restraint’ — Ottawa’s spending is accelerating – Financial Post Op-Ed
Before the federal government’s Fall Economic Statement last month, we often heard words like “restraint” and “prudence.” Less so afterwards. The statement’s projections confirm that every new forecast from Ottawa shows the federal government getting bigger faster, with every area of spending swelling more by the year.
The government’s last pre-COVID projections were in its 2019 fall statement. The final fiscal year in those projections was 2024/25, when federal spending was slated to hit $421 billion.
The government used the pandemic as an excuse to present no budget in 2020, an unprecedented failure for it and for Parliament as a whole. It did present a fall statement late in the year, however. To compare that…