Op-Eds
Published in the Financial Post on Dec. 13, 2011
By Alexandre Laurin and William Robson
Suppose a Canadian not employed by the federal government wanted to set aside a nest egg that would provide retirement income like that promised to a federal employee. He or she would invest in a security that is backed by taxpayers and indexed to inflation. Such a security exists: the federal government’s real return bond (RRB). The amount this person would need to put aside to achieve his or her goal — leaving aside retail costs and ignoring for the moment the tax limits on individual saving that would obstruct the project — would be a function of the yield on the RRB.
On March 31, 2011, the RRB yield was not the 4.2%…
Published in the Toronto Sun on September 14, 2011
By Benjamin Dachis
After circus-like public hearings intended to identify what residents think are core city services, Toronto is fast approaching decision day on what to cut, contract out or maintain.
On Sept. 19, the city’s executive committee will make recommendations on measures that could save the city money.
Many of the savings needed to fill the $774-million operating budget gap for 2012 can be found without cutting services.
Through competitive contracting, the city could maintain most services at a lower cost or improve them at existing costs.
Is it doable? Last spring, the city surveyed 13,000 residents to see what types of services…
Published in the Financial Post on April 8, 2011
By Finn Poschmann
When Jon Kesselman of Simon Fraser University and I published "A New Option for Retirement Savings: Tax-Prepaid Savings Plans," the roadmap for what was to become TFSAs, we had high hopes for tax free savings accounts. I doubt we would have believed anyone who told us that in less than 10 years' time nearly five million Canadians would hold these accounts, but we would have agreed that if you built it, they would come -and Canadian savers did. For folks in the tax policy business, TFSAs are a grand slam.
TFSAs, of course, are the arithmetic nearequivalent mirror image of registered retirement savings plans, and appeared in their current form courtesy…
Published in the Montreal Gazette on March 15, 2011
By Pierre Fortin
In the budget speech that he delivered in March 2010, provincial Finance Minister Raymond Bachand indicated that, if no changes were made to revenue and expenditure trends, the Quebec government was headed for a fiscal deficit of $12 billion in 2013-14. This would have been a huge deficit. Laying off all provincial public servants could not have solved one-third of this financial impasse.
Where did this deficit come from? A small part (no more than 10 per cent) arose from the aftermath of the 2008-09 recession. But mainly it was “structural.” Population aging was about to slow down economic growth, while adding to pressure on health spending. The…
Published in the Globe and Mail on February 11, 2011
By Benjamin Dachis
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s announcement that he intends to contract out more of Toronto’s waste services is causing reverberations across Canada, not because what’s news in Toronto is news elsewhere, but because this could be the start of a rethinking of municipal waste services in city halls across the country.
Labour contracts in Toronto and Vancouver expire on Dec. 31 – in the last round, agreements in both cities were settled after strikes – and Calgary’s contract with its public employees expired a month ago. Contracting will be a major theme in these labour negotiations.
Most Canadian cities contract out their waste services. But in…
