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1. Misleading claims about ‘poverty’ in Canada fail to distinguish between temporary and persistent spells

   Claims that “10 per cent of Canadians” live in poverty understandably sound dire. But those claims about the extent of poverty in Canada often focus on a snapshot in time of Canadians with low incomes. This is problematic and in fact ...

2. William Watson: Land-locking Alberta’s resources will reduce the wealth of our nation

   It’s early February so in my McGill University course in the history of economic doctrines we’ve finally reached Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. (What have we been waiting for? Aristotle, Aquinas, Mun, Cantillon, Quesnay, and Hume, to be ...

3. Hasty infrastructure spending in Canada may waste tax dollars

   Canada faces serious economic challenges as 2016 unfolds, and key leadership in dealing with the economic fallout of falling oil prices and slow economic growth must come from Bill Morneau, Canada’s federal minister of finance. The new ...

4. There are ways to help restore Canada’s troubled manufacturing sector

   Canada’s manufacturing sector is not doing well. The recently announced RBC Canadian Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI)—a measure of business conditions in the manufacturing sector—fell in December 2015 to 47.5 from 48.6 in November. Any ...

5. End of the Chretien Consensus in Canada?

   Appeared in the Financial Post, November 24, 2015 Canada enjoyed an economic and fiscal renaissance starting in the mid-1990s that lasted more than a decade. The boom was rooted in sound fiscal policy (balanced budgets, focused spending, and tax ...

6. William Watson: A thousand points of tax

   Whatever your politics, this was quite a week for Canadian economists. Our president-elect, that is the president-elect of the Canadian Economics Association (CEA), was named to the federal cabinet. On Oct. 19, Jean-Yves Duclos (pictured ...

7. What are the top three business/economic issues federal parties should be addressing in the current federal campaign?

   Appeared in Business in Vancouver, September 29, 2015 With a relatively weak Canadian economy, depressed commodity prices and the myriad of international economic issues (i.e. uncertainty in China), federal parties should offer solutions to the economic ...

8. Cheer up, western prosperity will return

   Appeared in the Calgary Herald As everyone from the Manitoba-Ontario border to Tofino knows, the local and provincial economies, which depend on resource extraction, have slowed. So this is a critical time to get some perspective on the past. If ...

9. France’s failed tax and spend experiment

   Appeared in the Calgary Herald When French President Francois Hollande visited Canada recently, one hopes the Gallic leader looked around. If he did, he would have noticed a stark difference in the economic opportunities between the two countries with the ...

10. Debt interest risks crowding out government spending on other priorities

    Appeared in the Regina Leader Post and Huffington Post, Aug 25, 2014 Canadian headlines about government deficits and debt can be dizzying and hard for people to grasp. A few billion here and several billion there and the natural response is for one’s ...