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1. Accounting for the True Cost of the Canada Pension Plan

   The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board reported its operating expenses as $490 million in fiscal 2012–13, or 0.28% of its assets, up from 0.11% six years earlier, touting this as a measure of its efficiency and low costs. However, this definition of ...

2. Once all the costs are counted, the Canada Pension Plan isn't a model of efficiency

   Appeared in the Financial Post In the recent debate over an expanded Canada Pension Plan (CPP), its low cost was offered as one of the main benefits for larger government-managed pensions. The Ontario government, introducing its own version of the CPP, ...

3. Do Labour Shortages Exist in Canada?

   The question of whether Canada’s economy suffers from labour shortages has been viewed quite differently by employers and economists. The business community almost universally identifies shortages as a problem, especially for skilled workers. That ...

4. Ontario Pension Plan based on faulty assumptions

   Appeared in the National Post The Ontario government's proposal to supplement the Canada Pension Plan with its own compulsory pension plan is based on a series of faulty assumptions. A fundamental but unproven assumption is that people are not saving ...

5. Evaluating the Proposed Ontario Pension Plan

   The Ontario government has proposed its own supplement to the CPP in an attempt to force more saving. In reality, Ontarians typically have an above-average saving rate, double that of the rest of Canada as recently as 2009. Saving in Ontario returned to ...

6. Plans to expand government pensions based on faulty assumptions

   Appeared in the Financial Post With talks to expand the Canada Pension Plan having stalled, the Ontario government has pledged to roll out its own provincial version. The impulse for a ‘big CPP’ hinges on the assumption that Canadians are too ignorant or ...

7. The Reality of Retirement Income in Canada

   Building on the three pillars of Canada?s pension system, the current retirement income system serves the vast majority of Canadians very well. The problem of poverty among the elderly, which drove many of the reforms in the 1970s and 1980s, has largely ...

8. Economic Consequences of a Lower Canadian Dollar

   After hovering around parity with the US dollar for three years, Canada?s exchange rate fell sharply in 2013, ending the year near 90 cents (US). Initially, the lower dollar was greeted with relief, especially for our manufacturing exporters. But as the ...

9. Tax people, not corporations: Public's misplaced sense of fairness costs the economy dearly

   Appeared in the Financial Post Until recently, there was a consensus in favour of competitive business taxes. But whenever governments are strapped for cash- which is most of the time for most of them, given their voracious appetite for spending- eyes ...

10. Corporate Income Taxes- Who Pays?

    Whenever governments are strapped for cash, eyes quickly turn to corporate income taxes as an expedient and presumed painless way to help balance their books. The erroneous thinking behind raising corporate income taxes, however, is that corporations and ...