Ontario taxpayers deserve better
It’s time for Ontario taxpayers to hit the debt panic button. The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a troubling report earlier this month that shows that, when Ontario’s provincial and municipal finances are looked at together, Ontario will be running deficits indefinitely, until at least the year 2095. Typically, when analysts look at the state of…
We have to start demanding that politicians start making some tough choices
Fifty-seven thousand dollars. That’s the average amount each Canadian will owe in provincial and federal government debt by the end of the year. It’s not just the rich or big corporations that will be mopping up this budget mess if politicians don’t take some air out of their bloated budgets. Politicians are already starting to…
Premier Horgan really needs to start getting his spending under control
The interest payments on British Columbia’s provincial debt this year could pay the salaries of 4,600 new paramedics for 10 years. But, instead of paying for first responders or providing tax relief to families, a whopping $2.8 billion is being sent to bondholders on Bay Street and Wall Street every year to pay for our…
His commitment to a smaller cabinet was short-lived
While there was much palace intrigue when Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced his cabinet shuffle last month, there was one elephant in the room that was not discussed: the cabinet’s size. Before Ford was sworn into office in 2018, he promised to slim down the size of the province’s cabinet, which had ballooned dramatically under…
Manitoba’s provincial government depends on long-calcified federal transfer programs to fund 37% of its budget
Around 1915, Winnipeg was frequently described as a second Chicago, a serious transportation hub with a bustling private economy. In 1921, it was the third-largest city in Canada. In the 1960s, Winnipeg was Western Canada’s corporate headquarters city. Today, Winnipeg is Canada’s ninth-largest city, known more in the United States, if not by most Canadians,…
Before our fiscal house falls to pieces
There’s only so many times that you can superglue the same broken mug back together, and there’s only so much debt a country can pile up before there are serious consequences. COVID-19 subsidies were always supposed to be temporary and now it’s time for the feds to set a concrete end date to all this…
... and more corporate welfare
Canadian politicians like Chrystia Freeland see tax competition as a “race to the bottom.” But for the rest of us, a global tax cartel will mean an inevitable march toward higher tax bills and more pork for companies with access to politicians. Freeland agreed to the American-led proposal for a global minimum business tax of…
The province isn't in much better financial shape than Newfoundland and Labrador
The scourge of COVID-19 is slowly being beaten back but Manitoba’s economy was in trouble before COVID-19 and the last 15 months have weakened it even more. Before COVID-19, the province’s economic weakness could be attributed to its big-spending governments. The Liberal federal government, the Progressive Conservative provincial government and Winnipeg’s municipal government continue to…
They are a bad idea and should be sold off
Reports, studies and analyses show that the essential character of state-owned enterprises, including Canadian Crown corporations, makes it impossible for them to have true independence or real profitability. These operations have inherent goals counter to the normal private sector pursuit of profit maximization. In the private sector, return on investment rewards shareholders for the risk…
Ontario’s college and university employees have been busy cashing in on massive pay hikes during the pandemic
While Ontario’s college and university employees have been busy cashing in on massive pay hikes during the pandemic, taxpayers and tuition-paying students have been barely getting by. The newly minted minister responsible for universities and colleges, Jill Dunlop, now has a full knapsack of homework to do on this expensive file. With a $33-billion deficit,…