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  1. Prime Ministers and Government Spending: A Retrospective

    This bulletin measures the level of per-person program spending undertaken annually by each prime minister, adjusting for inflation, since 1870.  1867 to 1869 were excluded due to a lack of inflation data. Per-person spending spiked during World ...

  2. Wynne government reopens spending tap, exposes province to more risk

    Appeared in the Financial Post, May 10, 2017 The Wynne government recently tabled Ontario’s first balanced operating budget in a decade. While it’s good to see the province finally bring its annual operating expenditures in line with revenues, there are ...

  3. Ontario’s budget opens the spending tap, drowns Ontarians in more debt

    Appeared in the Toronto Sun, April 28, 2017 On Thursday, Finance Minister Charles Sousa tabled the Ontario government’s budget for the 2017/18 fiscal year. The government’s spin has focused on the fact that the operating budget is balanced for the first ...

  4. Saskatchewan has a plan to balance its budget, Alberta doesn’t

    Appeared in the Calgary Sun, March 27, 2017 Alberta and Saskatchewan are energy-rich jurisdictions that fell on hard times as commodity prices fell. And both jurisdictions face significant fiscal challenges, with large budget deficits and substantial debt ...

  5. The Sustainability of Health Care Spending in Canada 2017

    Health care is the single largest budget item for every province in Canada, ranging from 34.3 percent of total program spending in Quebec to 43.2 percent in Ontario in 2016. Any changes in the amount spent on health care can have a significant impact on a ...

  6. Morneau’s ‘Plan for Middle Class Progress’ cuts GDP by $131 billion

    Appeared in the Toronto Sun, November 2, 2016 On Tuesday, Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau released his government’s Fall Economic Statement titled A Plan for Middle Class Progress. As noted in the release, “Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced ...

  7. Health-care spending increases in Canada point to unsustainable future

    Appeared in the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal, June 2, 2016 Health care is the single largest budget item for every provincial government in Canada. Increases in spending on health care can therefore have a significant impact on resources available for ...

  8. The Sustainability of Health Care Spending in Canada

    Health care is the single largest budget item for every province in Canada, ranging from 34.5 percent of total program spending in Quebec to 44.6 percent in Nova Scotia in 2015. Any changes in the amount spent on health care can have a significant impact ...

  9. Federal deficits could total nearly $200 billion over next five years

    Appeared in the Financial Post, May 12, 2016 As the saying goes, a moving target is hard to hit. That is why repeated shifts in the federal government’s deficit and debt goals over the past six months have been so concerning. What started as a promise to ...

  10. Moving Targets: Re-estimating Federal Deficits and Debt-to-GDP through 2020/21

    The federal government has repeatedly shifted the goal posts on its own “fiscal anchors.” This bulletin examines the robustness of the current “fiscal anchor” to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio by the government’s first mandate. The 2016 federal budget ...