The disclosure of information on the granting of stock options as part of senior managers’ compensation packages can be a cumbersome and patchy process in terms of both regulatory compliance and public accessibility. Closing the gaps to make the reporting and accessing of data less unwieldy and more timely, efficient and accurate, should be a priority for securities regulators Firms are required to disclose the issuing of stock options to their highestlevel executives in their...

Calgary’s 151 volunteer-run, non-profit community associations (CAs) need updated and clearly defined roles as they strive to deliver programs and services to their neighbourhoods, and advocate in local planning issues. With a council-driven mandate to begin a review of CAs’ roles in community representation, The City of Calgary has a prime opportunity to help them to better deliver local government to the people whose interests they represent. This paper is intended to inform The City’s...

Canada’s financial system made it through the 2008 global financial crisis better than many other economies did, but Canadian regulators nonetheless hastened to introduce a spate of new regulations to increase financial stability. However, all new regulations create effects, intended and unintended, and the process in Canada for assessing the impact of new regulations is not as useful as it could be. This could lead to regulations having unforeseen and unwanted effects on efficiency and...

The Investment Canada Act (ICA) needs an overhaul. This reform must include a paradigm shift in thinking to a much less restrictive view about the benefits of foreign direct investment in Canada. Currently, the ICA operates under the presumption that foreign firms behave detrimentally to the Canadian economy: foreign acquirers are required to show “net benefit” to Canada and may need to make onerous commitments for maintaining output or employment. This attitude, a holdover from...

What is the main reason for government debt accumulation in Canada? Is the main driver of debt the public policy choices made by governments, or are non-policy factors, like interest rates and the economic environment to blame? Answering this question is the first step for governments burdened by high levels of government debt to introduce policies aimed at getting that debt under control. The effort to curtail debts in the mid-1990s prompted research into the...

Ontario only started receiving equalization payments, for the first time in its history, in 2009. As soon as Ontario slipped into that “have-not” status, the federal government imposed a cap on the growth of equalization payouts. That led to substantial federal savings, but has cost Ontario and other recipients what would have been much larger payments since then. The federal government’s move to rein in the potential ballooning cost of equalization may have been understandable,...

From provision of OAS, GIS and CPP to the favourable taxation of Registered Pension Plans and RRSPs , Canada’s government has long focused policy efforts on better ensuring that working Canadians approach retirement with sufficient income supports in place. If the government wants to continue to move in this direction by trying to help maximize returns to pension plan members, while decreasing the portfolio risks faced by those pension plans, one step it could consider...

Demystifying brain aging

The last decade has seen serious setbacks to the global role of the United States. Iraq, Afghanistan and the 2008 economic crisis provoked deep partisan debates about American policy but little in the way of consensus on how to respond. Meanwhile, America’s rivals have gained strength and a new south-south economy of investment and trade has emerged. There is little disagreement that the U.S. has lost its relative power to influence developments around the world....

Funding for Canadian public health care has long relied on a “pay-as-you-go” funding model: for the most part, government pays for health costs each year from taxes collected in that fiscal year with effectively nothing put aside for projected rising health-care costs in the future. But the future of Canadian public health care is going to get more expensive as the relatively large cohort of baby boomers reaches retirement age. As they exit the work...

Prince Edward Island’s decision to harmonize its provincial sales tax with the federal GST next year will bring Canada’s smallest province huge benefits; consumers and businesses will reap the rewards. While services will be taxed higher, the removal of PST on purchases of goods and services used in operations will keep more money in consumers’ wallets as lower production costs cascade from business to the general public. Businesses, faced with a lower cost of capital,...

Charitable giving in Canada has never been higher. Between 1992 and 2008, contributions to charitable organizations more than doubled, from $4 billion to more than $9 billion. Donations to charitable foundations grew at an even more remarkable rate: more than 250 per cent, over the same period. But those striking numbers mask more puzzling, some might say more worrying, trends. While donations overall have grown, not all charity types have shared equally in the gains....

The federal government implemented a new expenditure management system in 2007. Under the new system, departments are required to review programs on a four-year cycle to determine if they are aligned with federal responsibilities and priorities, if they are efficiently delivered and if they are providing value for money, or effective. Based on the results from these strategic reviews, which are expected to be supported by formal evaluations that provide the evidence base for decisions,...

Alberta has a substance-abuse problem. The substance is fossil fuels, and the province has become hooked on the revenues from oil and gas sales to fund its spending on health, education and social services. As we are so often told, the first step in beating an addiction is admitting that a compulsion has gotten out of control. Recent announcements suggest that Alberta’s leaders appear to have finally taken that first crucial step. We applaud them...

A considerable momentum has developed around the perceived need for a national affordable housing strategy. The design of any such strategy should recognize who is in need, the size of the need, and where that need is greatest. This report presents facts on the affordability of housing for those at risk of the most serious form of housing crisis, namely, the threat of homelessness. The facts span the period 1990-2014 to better understand if housing...

Canadian economists, politicians and even environmentalists are lining up enthusiastically behind pricing carbon as the solution to controlling greenhouse gas emissions in this country. Pricing carbon (or, more accurately, pricing carbon dioxide) is not just a fashionable policy approach; it is the most efficient way we have to ration emissions, as it allows emitters — businesses and consumers — to make the most rational decisions about where it makes economic sense to curtail carbon and...

Researchers with an interest in examining and better understanding the social context of children suffering from neurodevelopmental disabilities can benefit by using data from a wide variety of Statistics Canada surveys as well as the information contained in administrative health databases. Selective use of a particular survey and database can be informative particularly when demographics, samples, and content align with the goals and outcomes of the researcher’s questions of interest. Disabilities are not merely conditions...

Corporate tax reform has long been a contentious issue in Canada. Official commissions, academics and others have often proposed changes in the way we tax corporations. During the last 30 years, perhaps largely owing to concerns about international competitiveness, the corporate tax rate has been substantially reduced. Since revenues did not decline as a result, those concerned by increased inequality who believe that corporate taxes are paid mainly by the rich have suggested that corporate...

There are good reasons to expect that attributes of local public finance may impact urban land use and, specifically, sprawl. A detailed and novel investigation of U.S. metropolitan areas published in 20061 provides substantial insights into the causes of sprawl, but it overlooks the main characteristics of local public finance (taxes and user charges). Using a subset of the data matched to city public finance data, a parallel analysis gives insight into the impacts of...

Who bears the burden, or incidence, of the corporate income tax (CIT)? This is an important, if not somewhat contentious, policy issue. In this paper we provide a discussion of the existing research on the question, viewing it through a Canadian policy lens. We also use some new results from a companion technical paper, which undertakes one of the few empirical investigations of the issue using Canadian data, to discuss the implications of increases in...

The Harper government has shown itself to be fully engaged and willing to take a public leadership position when it comes to the world’s response to the Syrian crisis, but Canada has yet to commit to a military intervention. That may well be the most sensible approach. There are many reasons that western countries have resisted a Libyan-style intervention in Syria, though there are compelling arguments on both sides. But with al-Qaida operatives involved in...

The danger in politicians promoting the idea that “Dutch Disease” is responsible for the decline of the Ontario manufacturing sector is that the suggestion implies that Canada’s manufacturing sector will bounce back if only we could slow down oil sands development, or if the Canadian dollar were to devalue. In reality, evidence suggests that the decline in Ontario manufacturing is the result of long-term structural changes in the economy, independent of the rise of the...

The drive by Canadian governments, at the provincial and federal level, to lower greenhouse gas emissions has resulted in a hodgepodge of different policy approaches. Some governments have opted for energy taxes, others for regulated limits on total emissions or emission intensity. Unfortunately, not all policy solutions are created equal; some are more effective than others in lowering total emissions and, worse still, may exact a heavy price on the economy. Policy-makers require a better...

While Canada has socialized most of the costs of treating illness, Canada has maintained a reliance on individuals interacting through private markets to invest in upstream health promotion and disease prevention. The failure of the market to provide the efficient level of upstream investment in health is leading to large and avoidable increases in the need for downstream medical treatment. The way to reduce the future deadweight loss of illness and disease is for provincial...

In the 11 years since the Romanow Commission warned that the income of physicians was threatening to become a significant driver of Canadian health-care costs, doctors in this country proceeded to chalk up some of their most rapid gains in earnings since the implementation of medicare. Since 2000, the gap between what the average physician makes, and what the average fully employed Canadian worker earns, has diverged like never before. In the last decade, the...