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1. Ottawa’s going to fight poverty—good! (though they could fight better)

   In what amounts to a new federal white paper on poverty, Opportunity for All, the federal government has announced it will try to cut Canada’s poverty rate in half by 2030. We in the column-writing business spend so much of our time ...

2. In the evolving trade debacle with the U.S, Ottawa must act

   The outlook for ongoing NAFTA negotiations grows dimmer by the day, notwithstanding the conciliatory statement by Mexico’s new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known colloquially as AMLO). In a recent interview after exit polling ...

3. Withstand the trade war by trading more

   Canada and the United States are in a trade war. The ongoing drama of NAFTA negotiations, and the possibility that the current trade arrangements, may not continue raises an important question. What is the Trudeau government’s Plan B? ...

4. Through the WTO, Canada could reaffirm its commitment to multilateral institutions

   The Trump administration’s imposition of tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum exports to the United States, and the G7 debacle, which ended in unprecedented acrimony between U.S. and Canadian officials, underscore two compelling issues ...

5. Canada, Trump and tariffs—a counterproductive and self-defeating quarrel

   President Trump’s recent actions have drawn widespread media attention to tariffs. Economic science provides an effective means of discerning the implications amid the hyperbole and rhetoric. Earlier this year, the Trump administration ...

6. The long list of disincentives to oil and gas investment in Canada keeps getting longer

   Recently, in the midst of the Trans Mountain pipeline saga, CBC reporter Tony Seskus wrote about Bill C-69, a plan to completely overhaul how major energy and environmental projects are reviewed by government in Canada (and the topic of ...

7. The end of Trump-whispering

   I wrote in January about how economists, apart from warning about the consequences, don’t have an awful lot to say about how best to fight a trade war. Adam Smith himself wrote that such wars were a situation in which policy be left to ...

8. Steel, aluminum, tablecloths and NAFTA

   What do steel and tablecloths have in common? They are now products that are part of a dollar-for-dollar tariff war between the United States and Canada. They are also canaries in the NAFTA coal mine, signalling that the oxygen has ...

9. Federal purchase of Trans Mountain pipeline distorts incentives, sets dangerous precedent

   Today, Finance Minister Bill Morneau (pictured above) announced that the federal government will purchase all assets related to the Trans Mountain pipeline. This includes the existing pipeline first built in the 1950s, and construction ...

10. State of federal finances worse than previously thought

    The latest federal budget showed that public finances are in poor shape and Ottawa is ill-prepared for a possible economic recession. But a recent Parliamentary Budget Office report suggests the situation may be worse than the government ...