Financial Post Comment
Reprinted courtesy of The National Post
MOST RECENT OPEDS - 2018-2020
How Elizabeth May taught conservatives never to trust green activists
April 19, 2017. Two recent books call into question the seriousness that anyone should accord to the Green party and its leader, Elizabeth May. And they also underscore why conservatives have become disillusioned with environmental activists.
It’s Canada vs. the protectionists in the new world trade wars
October 18, 2016. As a trading nation, Canada has much to lose if protectionism — clearly on the rise in the U.S. and Europe — gains more ground.
With so much drama at Statistics Canada why would we trust its independence?
September 20, 2016. The resignation of Wayne Smith last Friday marks the second time in six years Canada’s chief statistician has quit in protest. Who would have thought that being the head of Statistics Canada, where I worked for 36 years, would become one of the most dangerous jobs in Ottawa?
Canada’s economy keeps dragging — and government policies are making it worse
August 31, 2016. Statistics Canada reported on Wednesday that second-quarter GDP fell 0.4 per cent nationally, which is not particularly alarming in and of itself since all of the drop was due to the May wildfires in the Fort McMurray area. However, this is no reason to be sanguine: Growth rates are likely to prove uninspiring, as the North American economy remains stuck in the slow lane. Meanwhile, our governments’ monetary and fiscal prescriptions are proving ineffective, and possibly dangerously counterproductive.
The evidence is in — evidence-based policy can have disastrous results
August 24, 2016. Too much faith in data encourages overconfidence in our understanding, sometimes disastrously.
Trump is reviving the worst of Canada’s left-wing anti-American tendencies
August 4, 2016. The brief so-called “bromance” between Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama could be a high-water mark in relations between Canada and the United States. The possible election of Donald Trump is reviving the nascent anti-Americanism of our political left wing, which projects onto Trump all its perceived failings of American society. Trump himself is likely to take a dim view of Canada’s weak defence spending, while threatening to re-open our trade agreements.
Toronto has become a monolithic, suffocating liberal swamp
July 19, 2016. Toronto is now well established as the bastion of left-wing politics in Canada. Provincially, the six million people in the GTA elected only one Conservative in the last election, while federally, Conservatives were swept clean, their support in some downtown ridings in single digits. Toronto’s supply of left-wing ideas is so voluminous it exports lunacy such as the Leap manifesto, making Toronto an arms depot in the war against fossil fuels. Faith in the goodness and expertise of the public sector is being shipped wholesale from Queen’s Park to Parliament Hill as Kathleen Wynne’s ideological stormtroopers move to the frontlines of policy-making in Justin Trudeau’s new government.
Ottawa’s toxic sick leave regime
January 6, 2016. Negotiations with federal public service unions are set to resume and sick leave benefits should remain a part of the discussions. It is well-documented that public sector workers claim sick leave more than the private sector. Less understood are the reasons for this gap, which has its origins in incentives, the public service culture of entitlement to superior benefits and the refusal of government unions to tell its members that the gap exists and is widening.
The idea marketers: Canada should cull proliferation of think-tanks, let market do the funding
Ideas increasingly can only be exchanged freely outside of governments and universities.
CPP’s hidden costs: Pension plan no model of efficiency
Canadians should be informed of the total cost of administering the CPP’s operations.
Junk Science Week: Is Canada ‘flying blind’ because of a data deficit? Hardly
Reality cannot be seen solely through the prism of data.
Ontario’s proposed pension plan is riddled with faulty assumptions
Traditionally Ontarians have one of the highest personal saving rates in the country.
The Ontario government’s proposal to supplement the CPP with its own compulsory pension plan is based on a series of faulty assumptions.
Public sector investment never ‘kick-starts’ more business investment
Ontario public sector investment has tripled, while business investment stagnates.
Forget talk of a pension crisis, Canadians are very well protected in their retirement
Canadians are anything but the robotic automatons portrayed in models.
We’re undertaxed? Governments in Canada hardly starved for resources
Progressives are pushing the view that Canadians need to be taxed more highly.
What’s wrong with Central Canada? Outside Quebec and Ontario, investment is booming
For Canada to break out of its persistent slow growth, the Bank of Canada has emphasized the need for higher exports and business investment. More exports are likely once the U.S. economy emerges from its winter hibernation. However, business investment in Canada remains stuck in neutral, according to Statistics Canada’s recent annual survey of investment intentions. Planned outlays are up only 1.6% for 2014, slightly below last year’s microscopic growth.
Lawrence Solomon: Income splitting helps the poor too
The family should be recognized for its fundamental role in wealth creation.
The uncivil service: Public servants shouldn’t act as the Official Opposition
Bureaucrats who enter government to influence society don’t like it when elected officials disagree with them.
Are Canadians saving too much?
The campaign to increase the amount that Canadians save for retirement ignores the massive mandatory savings that Canadians hold.
The big question is not how to fix CPP, but whether we need to
Canada Pension Plan’s expansion threatens the long-term economic growth needed to secure incomes.
Canada’s government debt problem: The numbers just don’t add up
Provincial and municipal debt have pushed Canada’s government debt to dangerous levels.
Canadian economy is predisposed to grow
Naysayers don’t understand that our economy is dynamic and unpredictable.
Economy is just a sideshow for Obama
After investing in green energy, Obama asked, ‘What do you mean there are no jobs?’. There are a lot of things the public doesn’t want to see being made. Sausages. Statistics. Op-ed pieces like this one. But above all, public policy. The latest proof is The Escape Artists, a new book by ...
High is better
One of the most common errors in public commentary on the economy is the notion that devaluing the exchange rate paves the road to prosperity. The source of the error is easily understood. A lower exchange rate does benefit exports, an important sector in a ...
The end of thought?
Jeff Rubin is the kind of guy I want to like. He made a remark in 2005 about sheiks and mullahs controlling oil supplies that provoked his handlers at CIBC, where he was chief economist for 20 years, to send him on ...
Civil service Games
By now, you know the broad parameters of The Games. Innocents plucked from the working districts are pitted against each other in a Darwinian battle for survival. Contestants must not only battle each other, but also perils created ad hoc by the ...
Resources 'R' Us
There seems to be more than the usual disconnect between the business community and economists in Canada these days. Open any business page or stock market report and they are positively gushing with stories about ...
Canada's North finally opens up
Recently, the CBC released a DVD set featuring all its televised work of Glenn Gould. One of the interesting non-musical items was his hour-long film called The Idea of North, a reminder of the recurring if intermittent Canadian infatuation with our Northern ...
Many economic commentators are feeling disappointed these days. A complete collapse of the U.S. financial system in the wake of Lehman Brothers’ demise was averted. Now it seems Europe has avoided a similar calamity over Greece’s sovereign debt. But don’t worry: While ...
After Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty suggested that Canada’s oilsands exports raised the exchange rate and the loonie to the detriment of Ontario’s manufacturing base, many came to believe that oil prices are driving the exchange rate, and that the loonie is a ...
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