The Fragile Fiscal Pulse of Canada's Industrial Heartland: Ontario 2011 Budget

The author argues unless the Ontario provincial government takes aggressive steps to bring its budget to balance, debt service costs could rise sharply, and Ontarians could find themselves contributing a much larger share of their incomes to servicing the provincial debt.Fiscal and Tax Competitiveness, Ontario provincial budget

Manitoba’s Demographic Challenge: Why Improving Aboriginal Education Outcomes Is Vital for Economic Prosperity

As a wave of babyboomers retire, the upcoming decade will see only a modest expansion in Manitoba’s available workforce, and most of this net increase will depend on job-seeking young Aboriginals. Policy reforms should encourage more Aboriginal students to finish high school. Smart reforms to financial aid for postsecondary education would demonstrate aid availability to students early in their academic careers. This would bolster student educational aspirations during secondary studies for those on the margins of accessing postsecondary education. With large numbers of Aboriginal high-school dropouts, Manitoba cannot, and should not, rely solely on expanding international immigration to boost workforce growth.Economic Growth and Innovation, Manitoba, Aboriginal youth, education

Supporting Employees who Deploy: The Case for Financial Assistance to Employers of Military Reservists

Military reservists have become a vital component of Canada’s forces at home and abroad, and like their counterparts in the regular forces, provide a service for all Canadians. However, owing to recent federal and provincial job protection legislation, employers of reservists tend to bear a disproportionate share of the costs when their employees are deployed overseas or domestically. If reservists choose to take on full-time military duties, their civilian employer’s search for a temporary replacement worker of equal skill represents a genuine and potentially significant cost. An unintended consequence of the current policy framework is that relationships among employers, reservist employees, and the military can be eroded.Canadian military, Canadian Forces, military reservists, Canadian employers, Department of National Defence

Fixing a Persistent Problem: Canada's Regional Pockets of Unemployment

Canada's Employment Insurance program pays weekly benefits to the unemployed that vary in generosity across regions. While the variable entrance requirements help deliver more benefits to seasonal workers, the mechanism spreads the generosity of benefits to all workers in a region, raising the costs of the program and hindering labour market adjustment.social policy, Canadian EI program, employment insurance reform

Core, What is it Good For? Why the Bank of Canada Should Focus on Headline Inflation

With inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) growing faster than the Bank of Canada’s 2 percent target, the Bank has pointed out that core CPI, which excludes items whose prices are especially volatile, is at or below target and, further, that the Bank anticipates total CPI eventually will converge with the core measure. While the Bank is certainly justified in using core CPI as one of many imperfect measures of underlying inflation, our results suggest that the Bank should, at a minimum, revisit the role of core within its inflation-targeting framework and consider de-emphasizing core CPI in its communications or as an operational guide.Monetary Policy, Bank of Canada, inflation, Consumer Price Index (CPI), core CPI

Mending Canada's Employment Insurance Quilt: The Case for Restoring Equity

Under the current Employment Insurance (EI) system, long-lasting EI benefits are more easily accessed in regions with high unemployment rates than in regions with low unemployment rates where workers face tighter restrictions to access short-lived benefits. This complicated screening procedure, intended to better support the various circumstances facing unemployed workers across the country, creates a number of undesirable consequences: the most glaring being pockets of high, chronic unemployment. The goals and intentions of the EI regime should be simplified to better address the needs of Canada’s unemployed workers.Social Policy, Canada, employment insurance (EI), EI reforms

Greater Saving Required: Ahow Alberta Can Achieve Fiscal Sustainability from its Resource Revenues

The challenges that come with an abundant supply of resource wealth present difficult fiscal decisions for the Alberta government. One highly publicized concern is the need for the province to devise a long-run plan for resource revenue savings.fiscal policy, fiscal sustainability, government spending

Disarmed and Disadvantaged: Canada’s Workers Need More Physical Capital to Confront the Productivity Challenge

Canadian workers have enjoyed less robust investment in plant and equipment than their counterparts in the United States and other major developed countries over the past 15 years. And notwithstanding Canada’s relative economic resilience through the recent slump, the per-worker investment gap vis-à-vis other countries appears to have widened. The authors say if this pattern continues, Canadian businesses will continue equipping their workers less well than those in other countries, a setback in the quest for rising living standards in the coming expansion.Economic Growth and Innovation, Canadian workers, business investment per worker

Near Hits and Big Misses: Canada's 2009 Fiscal Accountability Rankings

Canadian governments are projecting large amounts of red ink in their 2009 budgets. Notwithstanding the impact of the economic slump on government finances, it is natural for Canadians to ask whether this new borrowing is partly the result of insufficient fiscal discipline during the good times, and whether the actual outcomes will be worse than the projections.fiscal policy, Canadian federal, provincial and territorial governments fiscal accountability rankings

The Retooling Challenge: Canada's Struggle to Close the Capital Investment Gap

Investment in plant and equipment per worker by business in Canada has long lagged that in the United States and other major developed countries, likely contributing to disappointing productivity growth in Canada. Fiscal and regulatory changes that would increase the rewards to investment and enhance competitive pressures to innovate would help ensure that Canadian workers in all provinces have the tools to keep pace with rivals abroad and achieve high and growing incomes in the years ahead.Fiscal and Tax Competitiveness, Economic Growth and Innovation, Canada, Canadian provinces, business investment, capital spending, new investment per worker, OECD countries