Monthly Archives: January 2007
Have we dodged a recession?
A couple of months ago, I was starting to get pessimistic: GDP shrank in September, and falling oil prices were eroding a trade surplus that consisted entirely of energy exports. Growth was zero in October; things weren’t looking good. But bad things didn’t continue to happen. StatsCan’s leading indicator index continued to rise. Building permits […]
The Alberta carfields
In his column in the Globe and Mail the other day, Jim Stanford worries about the arrival of a trade deficit in the auto sector: A new auto pact, for a new auto industry: The Globe and Mail’s Greg Keenan recently reported that Ford Canada — for the first time since 1961 — produced fewer […]
Workers we trust
According to a recent survey, the most trustworthy workers are in the following jobs (% of respondents who say people who work in these fields are trustworthy in parentheses): Firefighters (93) Nurses (87) Pharmacists (86) Airline pilots (81) Doctors (80) Police officers (69) Teachers (69) Armed forces personnel (65) Daycare workers (61) Accountants (54) Judges […]
I wish A Canadian Econoview allowed comments
A Canadian Econoview is really quite wonderful, but it doesn’t allow comments. This has become a mounting source of frustration for me, so I’ve decide to devote a post to making the comments that I’d like to make there, but can’t. 1) Importing skilled labour: Canadian medical planners have engineered a shortage of doctors, while […]
When universal programs are regressive
Alain Dubuc’s column in today’s Le Soleil makes the not-made-often-enough point that many universal programs are in fact regressive, and wonders why self-described progressives defend them so ferociously: Mais pourquoi a-t-on privilégié l’universalité ? Parce qu’elle rend les programmes sociaux acceptables, puisque tous les citoyens, et donc tous les électeurs, en sont bénéficiaires. Et par […]
Beware the clever theorist
Jim Markusen betrays our deepest, darkest secret to The Economist: "I am confident that I can concoct a model to generate any result desired by a reader with a deep pocketbook."
We can’t get to Kyoto from here, and there’s no point in pretending that we can
All of the opposition parties in Ottawa say that they support the Kyoto accord, and they insist that any climate change policy must be aimed at achieving the Kyoto targets for greenhouse gas emissions. But this is simply not going to happen. There is no feasible way we can achieve the Kyoto targets.
Electric boondoggle du jour
Last month, the government of Quebec and Alcan cobbled together a deal in which Alcan agreed to invest $2b in order to build a new aluminum smelter in the Saquenay-Lac St Jean region; the selling point was the creation of 740 jobs. The Quebec government’s contribution: A $400m interest-free loan over 30 years. $112m in […]
Why does Luxembourg have such high levels of greenhouse gas emissions?
I don’t understand this at all. Tonnnes of CO2 equivalents per person in 1990: Luxembourg: 35.5 Australia: 25.7 US: 23.8 Canada: 21.5 In 2003: Australia: 26.1 Luxembourg: 24.9 Canada: 23.9 US: 23.4 I can understand why Canada, Australia and the US are in the top four. But Luxembourg?
The politics of climate change policy in Canada
Convincing Canadians of the need to make significant sacrifices in order to slow global warming was never going to be easy.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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