“This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.” – T.S. Eliot An Apocalyptical Cliché Large swaths of Pakistan are in ruins. The same is still true of Haiti, to say nothing of the long-standing devastation [...]

It’s time to respin the National Post. So much so, that I’ve signed up for their 90-day free trial subscription. Mainly, I’m looking to get a stack of newsprint for lining our garden this fall for next spring. And it’s not just because the CanWest zombie has rebranded itself as PostMedia [whatever they intend that [...]

One million. No, it’s not the number of posts that Armine has written about the census. (I count only 32.) A million is the number of times this blog has been viewed since Marc started it back in the summer of 2006. It has been an eventful few years in Canadian economics: the commodity “super cycle,” [...]

Paul Krugman agrees with my view that the bond market is signaling  long term economic stagnation rather than experiencing a bubble - and he is, of course, far more influential and cogent than I. “But the argument has become even stranger recently, as it has become clear that investors aren’t worried about deficits; they’re worried about [...]

Tom Flanagan, Steven Harper’s guru in younger days and a political sherpa who helped guide the rise of the New Right in Canada in its early days, has put in his two cents on the census affair. It is a thoughtful piece, if somewhat predictable. But it leans on two important facts in an erroneous [...]

This morning, Statistics Canada reported that the implementation of Harmonized Sales Tax in Ontario and British Columbia helped drive the national inflation rate from 1.0% in June to 1.8% in July. By comparison, the Bank of Canada’s core inflation rate (which excludes tax changes and volatile items) edged down from 1.7% to 1.6%. However, annual inflation [...]

There are many ways to view the legacy of Prime Minister Harper and his Government thus far, but few offer evidence that the processes and institutions of democracy are held with any esteem. The selection of the latest Governor General of Canada has been described as one such rare example. The process of selecting the Governor General [...]

The short answer to that question is that I don’t know. I am not a believer in the infallibility of financial markets and perfect information and all that stuff. But the bond market is surely speaking loud and clear. As an aside, the media focus excessively on the ups and downs of the stock market. But [...]

Don Tapscott nails it in his commentary in today’s Globe and Mail. Everyone wants to see and not be seen.  That’s getting less possible, even for the most guarded individual. Today’s zeitgeist is Google, and the Google Zeitgeist is transparency.  The push-back  — and every thesis has its antithesis, as all you Hegel fans out there know [...]

Yes, yawn, fiscal federalism is pretty darn dull. But it is also pretty darn important.  The division of responsibilities and resources between the feds and the provinces is central to the shape of Canadian fiscal policy overall and to the level and design of a host of jointly financed programs, including health, post secondary education [...]

“If you kill one person, you’re prosecuted. If you kill ten people, you’re a celebrity; if you kill a quarter-of-a-million people, you’re invited to a peace conference.” – Haris Silajdžić Patient readers will bear with me as I sink into the quagmire of Balkan and, specifically, post-Yugoslav politics to make a broader point about states [...]

There is no environmental crisis, and global warming is just “a socialist plot” – at least according to Prime Minister Harper, when he was denouncing the Kyoto Accord. But while Harper’s many sins are serious – ignoring child poverty, sending Canadians to fight in Afghanistan, attacking women’s rights – the worst one is his minority [...]

Last night it was Imtiaz Popat and I on “The Rational” talking about the HST, HST petition oddities, recall of MLAs, a fall legislative session, the BC Conservatives and the NDP on the HST, a new BC Liberal leader, Kim Campbell and Rita Johnson, a fall federal election, direct democracy, Vic Toews being an immigrant [...]

This morning I wrote about how we and the French are continuing to rip off Haiti 7 months after their earthquake. Today I read about one woman’s experiences. She sounds so much like us. Getting to the human level during these kind of existential events, we always see that “they” are just like “us”. I [...]

It was so nice to see so many billions pledged to help Haiti after its earthquake where the planet kicked the country after it was down from centuries of racist, imperial and neoliberal exploitation. But how much money pledged has shown up? And worse, did you know that Haiti spent more than a century paying [...]

In the past few weeks some of Canada’s most respected economic authorities, including Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, have voiced concerns over the fragility of the recovery, globally and at home.  Now Paul Krugman joins that chorus of Cassandras, pointing his finger straight at the wishful thinkers who say Canada’s heavy lifting is [...]

The recent controversy over the long-form census has caused me to be a bit more suspicious of Statscan lately.  Two recent events in particular have left me scratching my head. First, as part of my doctoral dissertation research, I was trying to get ahold of (time series) social assistance statistics for all 10 Canadian provinces, namely social assistance rates [...]

CHANGES TO EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS UNDER BILL 68 = MORE BARRIERS FOR WORKERS Proposed changes to Employment Standards under Bill 68, Open for Business Act will create huge barriers for workers who face unpaid wages. The Workers’ Action Centre and Parkdale Community Legal Services are calling on the provincial government to stop proposed changes that would [...]