Category Canadian economy
The slow speed of recovery, PSST, plucking, and skewed news
Judging by output, employment, and unemployment, the Canadian economy hit bottom around the middle of 2009. Two and a half years later, output, employment and unemployment have recovered a lot. But like most observers I believe, and certainly hope, that we have not yet had a full recovery to the long run sustainable path. Why […]
Are Panic and Posturing Good Ways to Reduce the Deficit?
The Ontario government’s final approach to deficit reduction has begun with selected leaks of economist Don Drummond’s “first draft” of his review via media interviews designed to combine deficit reduction with high drama. A column by Martin Regg Cohn of the Toronto Star titled “Brace for a firestorm across Ontario” outlines cuts as high as […]
Does Dwight Duncan Believe in Magic?
Ontario is Canada’s largest province and befitting its status as the Queen of Confederation, now has the largest provincial debt and deficit in the country. In dealing with the provincial fiscal situation, much rests on the program spending review being conducted by economist Don Drummond. Due to be delivered by the end of January, it […]
Canadian Economic Forecasts: 2011 revisited
Happy New Year everyone! Last January we made forecasts for 2011. It's now time to check how well we did. (I will do a separate post for 2012 forecasts). Well, we all did badly. Even those of us who got some numbers roughly right got other numbers badly wrong. I think that shows that 2011 […]
Where will Canada’s growth come from?
The consensus outlook for Canadian economic growth in 2012 is generally tepid, with the possibility of another international financial crisis tipping us into recession as it did in the fall of 2008. After looking over the potential sources of growth, it's easy to see where this consensus came from. One of those data-intensive posts with […]
Rendering More Unto Caesar
Given that the Christmas season is associated with giving, rendering unto Caesar is a suitable blog topic even if it is compulsory rather than voluntary giving.
Capital Formation in Canada: The Sequel
I decided to do a bit more work with my Canadian gross-fixed capital formation series for the period 1870 to 2010 to see if I could estimate a simple regression model that might explain its fluctuations. If everything can be explained by a few simple economic variables, then the downward trend in the ratio since […]
Canada’s Evolving Investment-Output Ratio
A phone discussion with a reporter this week on trends in Canadian investment and capital formation piqued my curiosity as to what the long-term trends in Canadian gross fixed capital formation have been. Apparently, despite the global financial crisis and associated economic uncertainty, business investment and capital formation is still relatively strong at the moment […]
Provincial Government Health Spending: The Equity Dimension
The meeting of the federal and provincial/territorial health ministers in Halifax on Thursday will be preoccupied with the sustainability of health expenditures and the coming negotiations over the renewal of the health care accord. Naturally, the provinces want to ensure that federal transfers continue to rise to meet their needs while the federal government will […]
Seaways and Separatism
Like every Canadian my age, I was taught about the St Lawrence Seaway in school. But I never fully understood why it was built or how it worked. So, while in Montréal this past weekend, I decided to cycle the length of the Lachine Canal, and around to the Lachine Rapids (pictured on the right), to […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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