Progressive Economics Forum

There was little or no media coverage of the release of data on the distribution of the wealth of Canadians in 2016 last week, perhaps because there has been little or no change since the last Survey of Financial Security in 2012. The top 20% of Canadians own 67.3% of all net worth (assets of all kinds minus liabilities), almost exactly the same as in 2012. The bottom 20% have no net worth, and the bottom 40% collectively own just 2.3% of all net worth. The top 20% also own 74.6% of all...

Over at the website of the Calgary Homeless Foundation, I’ve  written a blog post about the Trudeau government’s recently-unveiled National Housing Strategy. Points raised in the post include the following: -One of the Strategy’s stated objectives is to reduce chronic homelessness in Canada by 50% over 10 years. -The Trudeau government claims that this is Canada’s “first ever” national housing strategy. That claim may not be accurate. -The Trudeau government appears to be overstating the...

Posted by Nick Falvo under aboriginal peoples, Alberta, budgets, Child Care, cities, demographics, education, employment, environment, fiscal federalism, fiscal policy, gender critique, homeless, housing, HST, income, income distribution, income support, Indigenous people, inflation, minimum wage, municipalities, NDP, oil and gas, poverty, privatization, progressive economic strategies, Role of government, social policy, taxation, wages, women. November 29th, 2017Comments:...

For a new CCPA blog post on housing (un)affordability, I dove into the latest Census data for Metro Vancouver. I used two series on shelter cost and shelter-to-income ratio, and found that 32% of households were paying more than 30% of income on shelter (all households, owners and renters) and 16% of households more than 50% of income on shelter. The latter number is pretty alarming: one in six households in Vancouver paying more than half their income just to keep a roof over their heads;...

Stephen Clarkson The following is a contribution in the blog series on the exceptional contribution of Stephen Clarkson to Canada.  Stephen Clarkson died in 2016. The substantial work he undertook on Canada’s relationship to Mexico is particularly relevant today as NAFTA negotiations occur. Stephen Clarkson Laura Macdonald is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Institute of Political Economy at Carleton University. Her research is focused on the role of...

Lou Pauly The following is a contribution in the blog series on the exceptional contribution of Stephen Clarkson to Canada.  Stephen Clarkson died in 2016. This piece is by Louis W. Pauly who is the J. Stefan Dupré Distinguished Professor of Political Economy at the University of Toronto. He is cross-appointed to the faculty of the Munk School of Global Affairs.   His publications include twelve books with his most influential work focusing on the politics of global finance, economic crisis...

The following is a contribution in the blog series on the exceptional contribution of Stephen Clarkson to Canada.  Stephen Clarkson died in 2016. This piece is by Andrew F. Cooper, who is a Professor at the Balsille School of International Affairs and the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo.  He is also the Director of the Centre for the Study of Rapid Global Change.  Andrew Cooper is the author of 9 books including Group of Twenty (2013) Internet Gambling Offshore...

My first, second and third posts on the Ontario electricity sector described how policy and administrative decisions by different Liberal Governments gave rise to excess electricity generation with an inflated cost structure, leading to higher electricity prices. In anticipation of June 2018 elections, the Liberal Government recently implemented a costly and first-in-Canada financial scheme to fund its “Fair Hydro Plan” (FHP) to provide a short-term 17% price reduction. Given that the FHP is...

Dr. Colin Phillips is an up-and-coming scholar in Canada’s homelessness sector. He has an opinion piece in today’s Toronto Star titled “Why Toronto needs a national housing strategy.” Points made in the opinion piece include the following: -The City of Toronto has worked hard to develop good practices on the ground to address homelessness. -But, like all of Canada’s major urban centres, it can’t properly address homelessness without substantial increases in funding from the federal and...

The 2017 Economic and Fiscal Update provides some detailed data (see pp. 51-53) on who will be impacted by the government’s plan to limit how much passive investment income can be earned in a private corporation. Income from investments held in a private corporation is taxed at a lower rate than investments held by a person in a non registered account such as an RRSP or TFSA. For most small businesses, there is no incentive to save in a private corporation rather than an RRSP of TFSA....