Op-Eds
This week’s review of the Ontario government’s pre-election financial report from the provincial Auditor-General reconfirmed what The Globe and Mail reported last weekend: The government is using an accounting trick to shrink its reported deficit and debt. It is hiding the cost of borrowing to subsidize electricity prices over the next few years by inventing an “asset” – revenue from the higher prices Ontario’s electricity consumers will pay later on – to keep the borrowing from showing in the government’s bottom line.
Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk’s review concludes that the pre-election report is not a reasonable presentation of Ontario’s finances. Her concerns deserve wide attention – not just in Ontario, but…
The federal government's proposed changes to the tax treatment of "passive" investment income in small business were among the most criticized elements of the consultation paper released last July. Wednesday's announcement from Finance Minister Bill Morneau addresses one of their most serious flaws: the threat to the retirement prospects of many small-business owners. The revised proposals strike a better balance between the government's "fairness" objective and the need for business owners to use their corporations to save for both future business and personal purposes.
To recap, the July proposals would have ended the refundability of taxes on passive investment income in Canadian private corporations when the owners took the…
Many families with young children struggle to afford good-quality childcare. The current tax deduction for child-care expenses helps to alleviate the cost for some, but many families, particularly at the lower end of the income scale, end up with practically no tax break from the current system. We can do better.
In a recent C.D. Howe Institute study, we propose to upend the tax treatment of child-care expenses, and replace the tax deduction with a system of generous refundable tax credits. It would provide up to 75-per-cent child-care cost subsidy at the bottom of the income scale – à la Quebec – for a child in private, unsubsidized, care. This revised system would increase work participation, fairness, quality of care and…
"My Region First!"
It's a rallying cry we're hearing more these days, as regionalism becomes more a part of public policy.
The B.C. government recently approved the Trans Mountain pipeline that will haul Alberta oil to port. And it did so after squeezing up to a cool billion dollars out of Kinder Morgan — money which will go into an environmental protection fund.
Sounds good. Alberta gets an economic boost, B.C. gets a share of the spoils and some environmental help, and Kinder Morgan foots the bill. Or does it?
Things aren't always how they appear. More often than not, the person who has to cut the cheque is not the one who ends up paying.
So who does? It's a complex question.
But in…
The federal government’s fall fiscal update had a mix of eye-grabbing announcements, including a massive infrastructure bank, mixed with under-the-radar but welcome improvements to fiscal transparency, and a plan to put the budget and main estimates on a consistent accounting standard for easy comparison. Conspicuously absent from the update was a firm target for a return to a balanced budget. Without one, we can’t judge the prudence — or recklessness — of the government’s fiscal policy.
The finance minister takes comfort in the expectation that the debt-to-GDP ratio will remain around its current value. True, governments can be said to be fiscally sustainable if debt does not grow as a share of the economy. But what…
