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1. Defence spending in Canada—a look at the data

   Recently in Brussels, U.S. President Donald Trump chastised several NATO members—including Canada—for not meeting their commitment to spend 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on national defence. Canada is among the 23 of 28 ...

2. CBC’s misleading tax ‘analysis’—a disservice to Canadians and the inequality debate

   A CBC News analysis making the rounds online shows that an increasing number of upper-income Canadians are getting away without paying any income tax. The analysis is highly misleading and fuels misplaced concerns about the distribution ...

3. Quebec embraces balanced budgets and debt reduction

   Quebec’s 2017 budget, released today, is largely a continuation of the Couillard government’s fiscal policy agenda. This is an agenda that generally embraces fiscal prudence, which is a significant departure from the fiscal approach ...

4. Average Canadian family paid $34,154 in taxes in 2015

   In a recent study, we tracked the total tax bill of the average Canadian family from 1961 to 2015. For 2015, we estimate that the average Canadian family (including single Canadians) earned $80,593 in income and paid $34,154 in total ...

5. Estimating the price of public health care for Canadian families

   Last year, the amount of money spent by provincial governments on Canada’s public health-care system accounted for about seven per cent of the country’s economy and was the single-largest item of their respective budgets (representing 40 ...

6. This year, Canadians celebrated Tax Freedom Day on June 7

   Canadians celebrated Tax Freedom Day on June 7 this year. That means if you had to pay your annual tax bill up front, you’d give government every dollar you earned before Tax Freedom Day. It’s only from June 7 onward that you’re finally ...

7. Why did the planned surplus in 2015/16 turn to deficit? Higher federal spending

   With much of the focus on last week’s federal budget being on the $29.4 billion deficit expected in 2016/17, an important takeaway that largely flew under the media radar is what caused the surplus that the former government had planned ...

8. Ontario Budget: dark cloud of government debt continues to hang over the province

   Today, the Wynne government tabled a budget with a bit of good news for Ontarians. Specifically, we learned that the operating deficit in 2015/16 will be somewhat smaller (at $5.7 billion) than was previously expected ($7.5 billion)—due ...

9. How does Alberta’s deficit stack up against the other provinces?

   Alberta’s budget is coming in a couple weeks and expectations are that the government will unveil a deficit for the current fiscal year totalling at least $5.9 billion. How does this number stack up against the other provinces? Let’s ...

10. Raising corporate taxes is bad economic policy

    One of Canada’s most important positive policy reforms over the past 15 years has been on corporate taxes. Federal and provincial governments of all political stripes realized the economically damaging effect of corporate income taxes ...