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1. Comparing Municipal Government Finances in Metro Vancouver, 2018 Edition

   Municipal governments play an important role in the lives of British Columbians by providing important services and collecting taxes. But municipal finances do not receive the same degree of public scrutiny as the finances of senior governments. This can ...

2. Trudeau government 0-for-3 for budgets that improve fundamentals for growing the economy

   With the Trudeau government tabling its third budget, the script has become familiar. Each budget the government loudly proclaims platitudes about growing the economy and helping the middle class. In reality, there’s no magic lever to ...

3. Provincial and local governments should make infrastructure decisions, not Ottawa

   Last week, and as part of Ottawa’s multi-billion infrastructure spending plan, Amarjeet Sohi, federal minister of infrastructure and communities, wrote letters to his ministerial counterparts in each province and territory laying out ...

4. Prime Minister Trudeau selling Canadians false bill of goods on infrastructure

   Appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press, May 19, 2017 You’d think that a prime minister would be intimately familiar with one of his government’s signature policy initiatives. However, regarding Ottawa’s multi-billion dollar infrastructure plan, a recent ...

5. Ottawa’s ‘innovation budget’ unlikely to spark innovation

   Government-sponsored venture capital initiatives tend to underperform compared to initiatives funded by the private sector. ...

6. Trudeau government stretches definition of ‘infrastructure’ too far

   Appeared in the Ottawa Sun, April 2, 2017 The 2017 federal budget revealed new details on the Trudeau government’s nearly $100 billion infrastructure spending plan. Canadians should know that, contrary to the government’s rhetoric, much of this spending ...

7. Ottawa spends $23 billion each year on innovation and skills training—with little sense of success

   The federal government is not properly measuring the effectiveness of 90 per cent of its spending on innovation and skills training. ...

8. Federal government’s infrastructure plan unlikely to spur economic growth

   Appeared in the Financial Post, March 8, 2017 In their campaigning, and since coming into power, the Trudeau Liberals have talked a lot about wanting to grow the economy to better serve Canada’s middle class. And they have pinned their economic hopes ...

9. Infrastructure spending in Canada—myths and reality

   Appeared in the Winnipeg Sun, March 3, 2017 In the coming weeks, the Trudeau government and several provincial governments will release budgets that will include plans to collectively spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure over the coming ...

10. Myths of Infrastructure Spending in Canada

    As the federal government and several provincial governments plan on collectively spending hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming decade on infrastructure, this report dispels five common myths used to argue for why now is a good time to ramp up ...