The government must craft a credible short-term plan to eliminate the budget deficit rather than continuing the bipartisan habit of kicking the can down the road
Author: Steve Lafleur
Steve's past work has focused primarily on housing, transportation, local government and inter-governmental fiscal relations. His current focus is on economic competitiveness of jurisdictions in the Prairie provinces.
Ontario must quickly balance budget in wake of pandemic
Deficits might seem like an abstract problem for our future selves (or future generations) but in Ontario, this simply isn’t the case
Ontario’s lost decade of job creation
Toronto and Ottawa are thriving but as long as large regions of Ontario struggle, the province and the country won’t meet their full economic potential
Feds should stop trying to fix Canadian housing markets
That’s a job better left to municipal and provincial governments, which can actually have an impact on supply and demand
Alberta government must cut taxes to restore economy
It’s time to reform the tax code, eliminate exemptions and cut corporate subsidies, while significantly reducing spending
Inflated employee pay at the heart of Alberta government’s debt
From wages to benefits to job security to early retirement, government employee compensation must be constrained
Alberta can’t blame the equalization system for its economic mess
Undisciplined spending by successive governments is responsible for Alberta’s fiscal problems
Alberta sinks deeper into a sea of red ink
The more the government spends on servicing its debt, the less is left over for priorities that Albertans value such as health care
In Florida, they’re snowbirds, in B.C., they’re speculators
Penalizing foreign homebuyers fails to address the fundamental problem: a lack of available houses
No ray of sunshine in Alberta’s fiscal forecast
Rachel Notley seems intent on duplicating the deep-diving debt performance of former Ontario NDP leader Bob Rae