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1. The finance minister said what? Part 3

   This third installment in what has unfortunately become an ongoing series of blog posts examining statements by Canada’s federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau (pictured above) focuses on recent comments made during testimony before the ...

2. The finance minister said what? Part 2

   Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau (pictured above) recently appeared on BNN Bloomberg and made a number of incredibly worrying statements indicating that he (and the federal government) are either wholly misunderstanding the ...

3. My ‘Aha! Moment’ on minimum wages… and more

   If firms don’t collude, and there are lots of them around, wages will rise until they’re equal to worker productivity. ...

4. The high cost of getting climate policy wrong

   The Internet is abuzz over a recent report by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) that shines some light on the potential impact of the federal carbon tax plan on Canada’s economy. Specifically, the report shows that the carbon price ...

5. The finance minister said what?

   Coming out of an emergency cabinet meeting earlier this week, ostensibly called to deal with the watershed announcement that Kinder Morgan was halting all “non-essential” spending on its Trans Mountain pipeline despite regulatory and ...

6. Government policies deterring investment in Canada

   Kinder Morgan’s announcement that it will halt “all non-essential activities and related spending on the Trans Mountain Expansion Project” could prove disastrous to Canada for many reasons. If the $7.4 billion Edmonton-Burnaby pipeline ...

7. Rolling back carbon taxes—here’s how

   When I talk about rolling back carbon taxes, I get a range of replies, ranging from “why do you want to destroy the Earth” to “you can’t do that because Trudeau has federalized it!” Another reply I get (usually said sarcastically) is “Oh ...

8. Ontario PC leader could promote pro-growth agenda for First Nations

   A Toronto Star columnist recently lamented about the apparent lack of policies from Ontario PC Leader Doug Ford on Indigenous affairs. While Indigenous issues are federal responsibilities, the provincial government can do a lot to ...

9. Ontario budget ignores past promises, offers no plan to enhance economic competitiveness

   Predictably, many of the headlines on Ontario’s 2018 budget, released today, focus on Premier Kathleen Wynne’s so-called “free” child care plan and other big-spending items. It is, after all, a big-spending budget. But crucially, the ...

10. Canada’s shadow economy—a shadow of its former self

    The International Monetary Fund, or IMF, has some interesting new estimates out on the size of different countries’ shadow economies. We in Canada are about to undergo a rare economic experiment in which part of the economy that has been ...