Public Governance and Accountability - Op Eds

Nicholas Dahir is a research assistant at the C.D. Howe Institute. William Robson is chief executive of the C.D. Howe Institute.

Among the most grating and persistent failings of our governments is that they are too slow. Too slow building things, too slow issuing permits and passports, too slow processing taxes, too slow even answering questions.

Less obvious in our daily lives, but troubling on a deeper level, is how late Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial governments are in presenting their budgets and public accounts. The C.D. Howe Institute recently released its annual report card on the clarity, reliability and timeliness of these documents. Our findings on timeliness alone reveal major problems…

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…

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…

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…

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…