Government Spending & Taxes

— Jul 5, 2023
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No Sign of Significant Debt Reduction or Tax Relief in Ford’s Spring 2023 Budget – It’s All Spend, Spend, Spend!

No Sign of Significant Debt Reduction or Tax Relief in Ford’s Spring 2023 Budget—It’s All Spend, Spend, Spend! is a new study that details what the current Ontario government could have achieved in terms of lower taxes, surpluses and debt relief if it had maintained the spending levels of the previous Wynne government. Instead, the current government has increased spending by $9.5 billion above the average (inflation adjusted) annual spending of its predecessor, and is forecasting a $1.3 billion deficit this year.

— Jun 27, 2023
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Fiscal Waste During the Pandemic in Canada and the United States

Fiscal Waste During the Pandemic in Canada and the United States is a new essay in the Fraser Institute’s series on the COVID-19 pandemic. It finds that the total cost of the Ottawa’s wasteful COVID spending—money that was poorly targeted or sent to ineligible recipients—will eclipse $110 billion by 2032/33, partly as a result of higher debt interest costs. In the United States, the total cost of wasted COVID spending will exceed $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.

— Jun 19, 2023
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This year, Tax Freedom Day is Monday, June 19. If you had to pay all your federal, provincial and municipal taxes up front, you would give government every dollar you earned from January 1st to Tax Freedom Day, when Canadians finally start working for themselves. In 2023, the average Canadian family (with two or more people) will pay 46.1 per cent of its annual income in taxes, including income taxes, payroll taxes, health taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, fuel taxes, carbon taxes and more.

— Jun 6, 2023
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Repeating the Past: Provinces Accept Federal Money at their Peril

Repeating the Past: Provinces Accept Federal Money at Their Peril draws on the experience of Canada in the 1990s, when the federal government reformed and reduced transfers to the provinces to tackle the federal deficit and mounting debt—and how that comparison can be used to inform the decisions of policymakers today.

— May 11, 2023
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Global Aftermath: The Economic and Fiscal Effects of COVID in Canada and the World

Global Aftermath: The Economic and Fiscal Effects of COVID in Canada and the World finds that during the pandemic, despite high levels of government spending and debt accumulation, Canada’s economy underperformed compared to most other advanced countries.

— May 2, 2023
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How Provincial Governments Respond to Fiscal Shocks and Federal Transfers

How Provincial Governments Respond to Fiscal Shocks and Federal Transfers is a new study that finds despite misperceptions that government deficits have no cost, higher deficit-financed spending by provincial governments over the past 50 years has, in fact, led to higher taxes and higher debt-servicing costs for taxpayers.

— Apr 18, 2023
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Comparing Government and Private Sector Compensation in Canada, 2023 Edition

Comparing Government and Private Sector Compensation in Canada, 2023 Edition, finds that government employees across Canada—including federal, provincial and municipal workers—were paid 8.5 per cent higher wages, on average, than workers in the private sector in 2021, the most recent year of available comparable data from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey.

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