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1. Trudeau government can’t bank on low interest rates forever

   Appeared in the Ottawa Sun, January 27, 2021 Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland recently stated the obvious—that she has “no crystal ball” to determine when interest rates will rise. Indeed, governments can’t control interest rates nor guarantee they will ...

2. Throne speech brings bigger government, more fiscal challenges

   In today’s throne speech, the Trudeau government announced substantial new spending commitments, marking a new vision for Canada, which includes increasing the size and role of government. Unfortunately, more spending and bigger ...

3. To avoid fiscal crisis, Trudeau government must learn from history

   Canada’s near-debt crisis in the early 1990s showed what happens when governments ignore and continually defer meaningful action to address ongoing fiscal problems—namely, excessive spending, deficits and debt. Worryingly, the Trudeau ...

4. The finance minister said what? Part 5

   On July 8, Finance Minister Bill Morneau delivered the federal government’s economic and fiscal “ snapshot,” which pins the federal deficit at $343 billion in 2020. The finance minister lauded (yet again) that the government’s fiscal ...

5. COVID-19 isn’t the only reason for our mega-deficit

   Appeared in the Financial Post, July 8, 2020 Today, the Trudeau government presents a “snapshot” of federal finances that’s likely to blame this year’s historic federal deficit on COVID-19 and the recession. But that’s only part of the story. The federal ...

6. Deferring Federal Taxes: Illustrating the Deficit Using the GST

   It is sometimes difficult for everyday Canadians to grasp the size of the federal deficit— estimated at $26.6 billion for 2019-20—because of its sheer size. This bulletin, along with subsequent planned instalments, aims to give Canadians that ...

7. Morneau doubles down on deficit-spending plans

   Appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press, February 6, 2020 Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau recently confirmed that, should a recession occur, Ottawa will turn on the spending taps using borrowed money (i.e. deficits). This government’s lack of fiscal ...

8. Canadians will pay for Trudeau government’s red ink

   Appeared in the Toronto Sun, November 20, 2019 Less than a month since the federal election, the latest projections from the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) already suggest Canadians can expect larger federal deficits than previously estimated. The ...

9. Candidates ignore federal budget on campaign trail

   Appeared in the Ottawa Sun, September 29, 2019 Unless you’ve been living underground, you’ve already heard plenty from party leaders this federal election, which is less than two weeks old. And yet, we’ve heard almost nothing from the Liberals, ...

10. There’s a lot we can’t control—but we can control spending

    Appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press, August 26, 2019 The mid-1960s to 1995 was a terrible period for federal government finances in Canada. The government borrowed every year but one, interest costs consumed ever-greater shares of revenues, the country’s ...