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Canadians risk becoming addicted to pandemic aid
Thursday, August 20th, 2020
We have remortgaged the house to get through the pandemic, as we should, but now we must pay for it, otherwise we are creating intergenerational inequity by effectively taxing future generations for today’s crisis. The way to address this particular moral hazard is a clear and credible economic and fiscal plan.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, youth
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Wanted: culture of innovation
Friday, September 16th, 2011
Sep. 16, 2011
our productivity growth has dropped substantially, from average growth of close to 3 per cent annually from 1961 to 1980, to under 1 per cent since 2000. And that gap between Canada and the U.S. has widened in the past decade, despite the relative improvement of macroeconomic fundamentals in our country…. Such innovation can be improved by five key drivers. First, competition matters to corporate behaviour… Second, Canada… delivers much of its private-sector innovation support through the tax system. We should be providing more direct support through new channels…
Tags: economy, globalization, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
The Canadian way to rein in debt
Monday, January 10th, 2011
Jan. 10, 2011
Canada demonstrated over 27 consecutive years of deficit that postponing fiscal restraint until a more propitious moment does not merely delay the day of reckoning, it exacerbates the problem through compounding debt accumulation and rising interest costs… fiscal gradualism was being swamped by debt dynamics; that growing out of the deficit neglected the inconvenient truth that servicing debt was a structural, not cyclical, problem; and that the greater loss of confidence came from inaction, not from resolute fiscal actions.
Tags: budget, economy, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Innovation is our hidden deficit
Friday, March 12th, 2010
Mar. 12, 2010
Innovation lies at the heart of modern competitiveness. It drives growth. It improves productivity and living standards. It gives consumers new choices. It is the answer to the question of how a high-wage economy such as Canada’s can compete with emerging countries with low costs of production. The problem is that Canada is not an innovation leader, Canadian business invests far less in innovation than many of their foreign competitors, and the competition is about to get tougher…
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