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…
Canada Dodged Recession, Risks Remain in 2024
March 27, 2024 – Canada avoided a recession in the last two years but risks remain for 2024, according to the C.D. Howe Institute’s Business Cycle Council (BCC).
In “So Far, So Good: C.D. Howe Institute Business Cycle Council Declares Recession Avoided in 2022, 2023,” members of the BCC examined if a recession had occurred in the past two years and found that the Canadian economy did not fulfill the conditions required to indicate a recession.
C.D. Howe Institute Business Cycle Council (BCC) is an authoritative arbiter of business cycle dates in Canada. The BCC meets when economic conditions indicate the possibility of entry to, or exit from, a recession and acts as a conduit for research aimed at developing a deeper…
Garbutt, Harker – Choosing Which “Critical Minerals” Should Be Subsidized Is Problematic
From: Jonathan Garbutt & Michael Harker To: The Honourable Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Finance of Canada Date: March 26, 2024 Re: Choosing Which “Critical Minerals” Should Be Subsidized Is Problematic Finance Canada has proposed amendments via Bill C-59 to the Income Tax Act that expand Canada’s flow-through share (FTS) tax incentive program to include mining projects […] 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
From: Lennie Kaplan To: Albertans concerned with preserving fiscal transparency and accountability Date: March 25, 2024 Re: Alberta risks back-sliding on fiscal transparency and accountability With the introduction of recent amendments to Alberta’s fiscal framework, the provincial government risks back-sliding on fiscal transparency and accountability as tracked annually by the C.D. Howe Institute. The Alberta government amendment in question abandons […] Webcast – Empty Seats: How Labour Shortages are Impacting SMEs
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.
Ontario Budget 2024 – The Agenda with Steve Paikin
The Ontario government released its plans for spending for the next year yesterday. But are they priorities sound? C.D. Howe Institute CEO Bill Robson joined the show to discuss.
Charles DeLand – Fewer, Stronger Policies Would Help Fill Emissions Investment Gap
To: Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland From: Charles DeLand Date: March 22, 2024 Re: Fewer, Stronger Policies Would Help Fill Emissions Investment Gap Last month, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources declared he’d like to see more green investment action by industrial greenhouse gas emitters, specifically those in the oilsands. Around the same time, a […] Tell-tale Signals: A Customized Toolkit for Tracking the Economy
To make informed decisions, policymakers need reliable and robust economic data, and researchers at the C.D. Howe Institute have created many unique data sets for their analyses and recommendations over the years. This Commentary brings together some novel data series from previous C.D. Howe Institute studies to provide third parties, including the Bank of […] William B.P. Robson – A Cheer for Nova Scotia’s New Inflation Indexing
From: William B.P. Robson To: Beleaguered taxpayers Date: March 21, 2024 Re: A Cheer for Nova Scotia’s New Inflation Indexing Nova Scotia’s budgets do not always make national headlines, but the one recently delivered by Minister of Finance and Treasury Board Allan MacMaster got some well-deserved attention. It indexed the province’s personal income tax to inflation. Starting next January, the thresholds […] Hodgson, Smallridge – The Best Indigenous Financing Gap Solution? An Indigenous Development Bank
From: Glen Hodgson and Diana Smallridge To: Reconciliation watchers Date: March 20, 2024 Re: The Best Indigenous Financing Gap Solution? An Indigenous Development Bank Access to financing is critical if the Indigenous economy is to make meaningful progress on sustained economic development as a basis for reconciliation. There are significant market gaps in existing Indigenous financing and it’s time for […]