Broken Spending Estimates with Bill Robson and Neil Moss
You wouldn’t let your contractor go over budget without asking why. So why should we give Ottawa a pass? Neil Moss of The Hill Times joins C.D. Howe Institute CEO Bill Robson and host Michael Hainsworth to discuss why MPs weren’t keeping an eye on spending during the pandemic – or today.
Tiff Macklem reads the tea leaves: Bank of Canada was right to hit pause on interest rates – Globe and Mail
The Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 5 per cent Wednesday – a smart move.
Although the central bank’s governing council may have made its decision ahead of the weak GDP numbers released last week, those numbers underlined the reasons to hold. Real GDP contracted at an annualized rate of 0.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2023 and fell 0.2 per cent month-over-month in June (annualized as well). Looking ahead, Statistics Canada’s advanced estimate for July was flat. The household consumption the bank has been battling finally seems to be flagging. Data on bank deposits and job vacancies also testify to an economy losing steam.
Monetary policy works with a lag, and these latest figures suggest…
As costs of fires and floods mount, Canadians need better climate risk management – Globe and Mail
Severe forest fires, floods and other extreme weather events have hit many Canadian regions hard, with climate change the probable cause. These severe events have destroyed housing, commercial property and infrastructure with a lengthy recovery period ahead. Insured and uninsured losses will be in the billions, in addition to the cost of repairing public infrastructure. Lives have been lost in some cases.
These events are a wake-up call. We need improved risk management and climate adaptation, since there will be many other extreme weather events. A forward-looking risk management plan through comprehensive property insurance and climate adaptation would reduce the need for governments to assume an open-ended climate damage risk…
Federal tax incentives could help solve the rental housing crisis – Financial Post
Do you know anyone looking for an affordable rental apartment in a major Canadian city? If you do, good luck to them.
Rentals are tough to find, and rents are getting very expensive. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), purpose-built apartment vacancy rates nationally fell to a 20-year low of 1.9 per cent in 2022, while average rents rose 6.1 per cent. Would-be tenants increasingly find themselves in desperate bidding wars over sub-standard accommodation in areas far from where they want to live.
Canadian policymakers should be very concerned about the rental housing crisis. According to the 2021 Census, 33.1 per cent of Canadians rent. That number is higher in big cities, where about half of…
Benjamin Dachis – What Municipal Financial Audits are Likely to Find
To: Ontario Municipalities From: Benjamin Dachis Date: August 23, 2023 Re: What Municipal Financial Audits are Likely to Find In late July, the Ontario government announced details on a financial audit of select municipalities to assess the impact of provincial changes to development-related fees. The audit will likely find that the change had some financial […] Fiscal COVID: The Pandemic’s Impact on Government Finances and Accountability in Canada
Fiscal Covid The Pandemic’s Impact On Government Finances and Accountability in Canada Beyond its damage to Canadians’ health and their economy, COVID-19 strained public finances, and both highlighted and exacerbated gaps in governments’ accountability to legislators and voters. Spending by all senior governments jumped in the 2020/21 fiscal year – up 7 percent on average across […] 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 […] Show Us Our Money: Fiscal Accountability in Canada’s Cities, 2022
The budgets governments present around the beginning of their fiscal year and the financial statements they publish after the fiscal year has ended are critical tools for legislators and voters. To non-experts, the transparency of these documents matters: from them, readers should be able to understand the government’s plans, see how results differed from […] 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…