Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt: The Fiscal Implications of Demographic Change for Ottawa and the Provinces
Canada’s changing demographics matter for public finances. Canada’s baby boom from the late 1940s through the mid-1960s was large. The subsequent decline in the national fertility rate was steep. As a result, some 65 years after the baby boom’s peak, Canada’s population is aging fast. Rapid population aging creates challenges for public finances. Departures from […] Mounting Fiscal Stress: How Aging is Tightening Provincial Budgets
Canada’s aging population will tighten the budgets of provinces and territories, creating an implicit liability of more than $2 trillion over the next four-and-a-half decades, according to a new C.D. Howe Institute report. In “…C.D. Howe Institute Monetary Policy Council Calls for Bank of Canada to Cut Overnight Rate to 4.25 Percent Next Week and to 3.00 Percent in a Year
August 29, 2024 – The C.D. Howe Institute’s Monetary Policy Council (MPC) calls for the Bank of Canada to lower its target for the overnight rate, its benchmark policy interest rate, to 4.25 percent at its next announcement on September 4th. The MPC further calls for the Bank to lower the target to 4.00 percent at the following announcement in October and to 3.00 percent by September of 2025.
The MPC provides an independent assessment of the monetary stance consistent with the Bank of Canada’s 2 percent inflation target. MPC co-chair, William Robson, the Institute’…
Bourque and Caracciolo – How to Improve Financial Regulation. Pruning Would Help
To: Canada’s financial regulators From: Paul C. Bourque and Gherardo Gennaro Caracciolo Date: August 27, 2024 Re: How to Improve Financial Regulation. Pruning Would Help Regulation is an important part of Canada’s financial landscape. And to ensure the rules support an efficient and effective financial regulatory framework, regulators need to be “constant gardeners.” Canada has 44 different federal and […] Daniel Schwanen – Ordering the rail workers back was the right thing to do
Published in The Globe and Mail
Millions of Canadians and hundreds of thousands of businesses were relieved to hear that on Saturday, the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) had ordered the country’s two major national railways, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City, to resume services, and for their workers to return to their jobs. At the same time, it sent their contract disputes to binding arbitration.
This decision, taken at the behest of Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon, came after lockouts by the two companies last week, and strikes called by members of the Teamsters union.
The CIRB had ruled earlier this month that the rail transport of commodities is not an essential service – not resulting in…
Graph of the Week: Tracking The Gap – Unemployment and Job Vacancies in Canada
Introducing Graph of the Week, a new series from the C.D. Howe Institute’s Graphic Intelligence that presents valuable and easily digestible data. Each Monday we will unveil one new captivating chart or graph with interesting insights, explaining it in two-to-three sentences. Dive into the data with us.The gap between the number of unemployed and job vacancies in Canada […] Don Wright – Don’t forget basic math when ‘creating jobs’
Published in the Financial Post
Governments often talk about “creating jobs,” but what they really do is choose some jobs at the expense of others. With their myriad spending, taxing and regulatory decisions, all governments try to direct job growth to different sectors — public or private, services or goods, resources or non-resources, and so on.
We all hope governments choose wisely. It would help if they started paying more explicit attention to one factor: the impact of their decisions on Canadians’ standard of living.
A country’s standard of living is largely determined by the wages and net government revenue its tradeable goods and services sector can pay while remaining competitive against international…
Parisa Mahboubi – Faster, Please, on Fixing the Temporary Foreign Worker Problem
From: Parisa MahboubiTo: Immigration observersDate: August 23, 2024Re: Faster, Please, on Fixing the Temporary Foreign Worker Problem The government has committed to reducing the non-permanent resident population to 5 percent of the overall population within three years, current trends in issuing work permits reveal a troubling disconnect between policy goals and on-the-ground realities. Despite efforts to curb the influx […] Feds Need to Fix Their Mistake and Bring Back Real Return Bonds
The federal government’s decision to stop issuing real return bonds in 2022 took the investment community by surprise — and major investors surveyed by the C.D. Howe Institute think Ottawa made a mistake by ending the program. Real return bonds (RRBs) are indexed…Cancel the RRB Cancellation
Two years ago, the federal government ceased issuing Real Return Bonds, which are a valuable tool for Canadian savers to protect themselves from inflation. The government cited weak demand for RRBs as justifying the cancellation, without acknowledging that its approach to RRBs itself promoted a thin market that lessened the attractiveness of RRBs to potential […] Ari Van Assche – Canada’s Electric Vehicle De-Risking Trilemma
To: Canadian trade watchers From: Ari Van Assche Date: August 21, 2024Re: Canada’s Electric Vehicle De-Risking Trilemma With the recent wrap-up of Ottawa’s month-long public consultation on levying tariffs on electrical vehicles (EVs) made in China, let’s paraphrase a story Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman once used to explain the often under-appreciated benefits of free trade: Consider a Canadian entrepreneur who starts a new […] Anna Stokke – Reversing the decline in Canadian math scores
To: Canadian Ministers of EducationFrom: Anna StokkeDate: August 20, 2024Re: Reversing the decline in Canadian math scores Math scores on international exams administered by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development declined in all provinces between 2003 and 2022. In almost all provinces, the proportion of students performing at the lowest levels has increased since 2003 and has more than […]