Tag Archives: canada
Who Gets What Federalism
The recent Mowat Centre report on Ontario’s fiscal gap with Ottawa and the lament that Ontario puts more into Confederation than it gets out brought to mind a poll done in 2005 by EKOS that showed that 51 percent of Canadians believed their province was putting more money into Confederation than it gets out. Of […]
Crime and Police
Statistics Canada has released its most recent report on police personnel and expenditures and notes that police strength measured as officers per capita declined in 2012 by 1 percent. Moreover, there has been a slight decline in police expenditures overall with spending in 2011 totaling 12.9 billion – a decline of 0.7 percent from the […]
Canadian Exceptionalism in Compensation
The Parliamentary Budget Office's most recent release "The Fiscal Impact of Federal Personnel Expenses: Trends and Developments" provides some interesting statistics on the amounts of employee compensation paid by Canada’s federal government. According to the report: “in 2011-12, Canada’s federal personnel expenses were $43.8 B, or 2.55 per cent of GDP. These expenses supported a […]
Resource Revenue Retention: New Twists on an Old Idea?
In a post on iPolitics, author and journalist Madelaine Drohan discusses the move by the PQ government in Quebec to embrace the Generations Fund – a sovereign wealth fund created by the Liberal government of Jean Charest in 2006. The original plan was to invest water power and mining royalties into a fund whose income […]
Carney’s Departure: The Bigger Picture
Well, it has been an exciting couple of days in Canada on the policy side given the juxtaposition of the following news: 1) the federal by-election results suggest a more competitive political environment for the federal Conservatives in the stronghold of Alberta 2) the world-class City of Toronto is deposing its Mayor over a conflict […]
Why Harper is Not Going to Halifax
The provincial premiers are meeting on the economy in Halifax today and tomorrow and Prime Minister Harper will not be joining them. Several of them have offered up expressions of surprise and disappointment and have lamented the absence of the Prime Minister. The operatic drama that often characterizes exchanges at federal-provincial meetings has been absent […]
One of These Countries is Not Like the Others
Given that the Finance Minister is presenting the Federal Fiscal Update today in Fredericton, it is instructive to review some fiscal comparisons right out of the release of the 2012 Federal Fiscal Reference Tables (which in turn used the OECD Economic Outlook May 2012 numbers for the international comparison). Figure 1 plots the ratio of […]
Thinking of coming to Canada to do an MA in Economics?
Every year, thousands of international students apply to Canadian MA programs in Economics. Studying abroad represents an investment of tens of thousands of dollars. Yet, without knowledge of Canadian customs and institutions, how can a student make the best of that investment? Here are some common questions international students ask (and some students don't ask […]
Five years of the Working Income Tax Benefit
Quietly, without (much) fanfare, Stephen Harper's Conservative government has been gradually promoting a new model for income support programs: the Working Income Tax Benefit, or WITB. On the face of it, WITB looks very similar to the Liberal government's signature program, Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB). Both WITB and CCTB provide cash support to low […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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