Tag Archives: PBO

Fiscal Clout and Federation Redesign

The Parliamentary Budget Office has issued a very pleasing report on federal fiscal sustainability but the flip side is that the provinces and territories are now not fiscally sustainable because of their rising health costs and the federal fiscal gap created by the change in the Canada Health Transfer escalator. According to Andrew Coyne, 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 […]

Information and Empire

The case of the Parliamentary Budget Officer again locking horns with the federal government because of a request for information is symptomatic of a broader problem.  The PBO is giving the government until the fall to release additional details of planned budget cuts or will take them to court.   Naturally, in Ottawa’s current budgetary siege […]