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1. Federal budget continues the spending spree

   In this year’s federal budget, Finance Minister Bill Morneau confirmed the government is more than happy to continue down a risky path of deficit-financed spending. Once again, the government opted to throw money in every direction rather ...

2. It’s official—the Trudeau government has no interest in balancing the budget

   Appeared in the Financial Post, March 19, 2019 On Tuesday, the federal Liberals released their fourth and last budget before facing the electorate this fall. While there are many competing analyses on aspects of the budget, one thing is certain—the ...

3. Budget advice—Bill Morneau, channel James Robb

   National Post Radio wants my thoughts on the upcoming federal budget. I’m not privy to Ottawa gossip. To my mind, any sane person avoids it like the… measles. Who’s up, who’s down? What’s hot, what’s not? These are not considerations you ...

4. The Trudeau and Ford governments—two fiscal statements, one debt problem

   Appeared in the National Newswatch, November 14, 2018 Both the Ford government in Ontario and the Trudeau government in Ottawa will release their fall fiscal and economic statements this month. Despite a tendency to compartmentalize these separate events, ...

5. Trudeau government employs spend it if you have it (and more) fiscal policy

   Federal program spending will reach a projected $321.5 billion next year—up 22.2 per cent since 2015. ...

6. Trudeau government must act now on trade, taxes as possible recession looms

   Appeared in the Moncton Times & Transcript, September 28, 2018 As Parliament resumes, Canada’s policymakers face a turbulent state of affairs as the United States and China wage an economic Cold War armed with tariffs and Ottawa continues negotiating ...

7. 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 ...

8. Federal infrastructure spending—a mess of delays and misguided priorities

   Appeared in the Globe and Mail, April 27, 2018 In 2015, the Trudeau government came into office on the promise of running small annual budget deficits of no more than $10 billion for three years to finance new spending on infrastructure projects that ...

9. Ottawa using bounty of robust growth to simply boost spending

   The recently-released 2018 federal budget calls for growth in both spending and revenues. Between 2017-18 and 2022-23, total revenues are forecast to grow from $309.6 billion to $373.9 billion—an increase of 21 per cent. After a three ...

10. 35-stop shopping—coming soon to a government near you

    If more innovation programs were all we needed to solve our innovation problems, they would have been solved a long time ago. ...