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  • Raising Saskatchewan’s Minimum Wage

    Saskatchewan Federation of Labour president Larry Hubich and I have the following joint op-ed in today’s Regina Leader-Post (page A10). It’s been fourteen years since I first wrote into The Leader-Post advocating a minimum-wage increase. UPDATE (August 31): The op-ed also appeared in today’s Saskatoon StarPhoenix (page A11), Wednesday’s Estevan Mercury (page A7) and Swift Current’s Southwest Booster. Why higher wages make economic…

  • Prices Decline Yet Again

    Statistics Canada reported today that, for a third consecutive month, consumer prices declined and the inflation rate fell below 2%. In July, the inflation rate was 1.3% and the Bank of Canada’s core rate was 1.7%. Gasoline and natural gas prices, which have been lower this summer than last, dragged down the…

  • Saskatchewan’s Rising Cost of Living

    Today’s Consumer Price Index provides further evidence of Saskatchewan’s rising cost of living. Among the provinces, Saskatchewan is tied for the second-highest annual inflation rate: 2.0%. Consumer prices decreased in June from May in nine provinces (all except Alberta). But Saskatchewan was tied for the smallest monthly price decline: -0.3%. Compared to the…

  • Look at the other side of the petrodollar coin

    Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty recently spoke publicly about the problems Canada’s oil-powered currency was causing for his province’s manufacturing industry. But his words were drowned out by pious outrage from petroleum advocates (led by Alberta’s politicking Premier Alison Redford). How dare he suggest that the bitumen boom could be anything…

  • CLC Analysis of the 2012 Federal Budget

    Budgets are all about choices. With unemployment and underemployment still at very high levels and a shrinking middle-class, the federal government could and should have laid the basis for a sustained and broadly shared economic recovery. The federal government should be taking a larger and stronger role in making the…

  • A Tale of Two Austerity Hardliners

    Conservative soul mates, Stephen Harper and British Prime Minister David Cameron, were in Davos, Switzerland a month ago lecturing Eurozone leaders on how to get their collective act together. As they have done since the G-20 meeting in Toronto, both were preaching fiscal austerity as the solution to Europe’s, and…

  • Budget Cuts Could Worsen Rising Unemployment

    It was not a happy new year for Canadian job seekers. Statistics Canada reported today that unemployment rose for a fourth consecutive month in January. Overall employment remained flat as Canada’s population and labour force grew at a normal pace, leaving more workers without jobs. The good news in today’s report is that 39,200…

  • Is The OAS/GIS Program Unaffordable?

    No. Of course not. Even if the government waves around scary large increases in nominal dollar terms. As has been widely reported, the most recent OAS actuarial report shows that total program expenditures will rise from $38.8 billion in 2011 to $107.9 billion in 2030. However, the dollar figure reflects, not just…

  • The Race To The Trough: What Did Corporate Tax Cuts Deliver?

    The CLC today celebrated Corporate Tax Freedom Day – defined as the day on which corporations have paid their share of all government taxes.  It featured a race of mechanical pigs to a trough full of cash – with the pigs wearing the colours of leading Canadian corporations with large…

  • More Than 1.4 Million Unemployed

    Statistics Canada reported today that unemployment exceeds 1.4 million for the first time in eight months. December’s unemployment figure was the highest recorded since April. And these official figures significantly understate the problem of underemployment by not counting people who have given up looking for work and part-timers who want full-time jobs.…

  • Growing Gap

    Canada’s CEO Elite 100

    The 0.01% Download 693.88 KB 21 pages The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ annual look at CEO compensation reveals that by 12:00 noon on January 3rd, the first official working day of the year, Canada’s Elite 100 CEOs (the 100 highest paid CEOs of companies listed in the TSX Index) will…

  • Modest Inflation Outstrips Wages and Canada Social Transfer

    Statistics Canada reported today that the annual inflation rate remained 2.9% and the Bank of Canada’s core rate remained 2.1% in November. The monthly increase in consumer prices slowed to 0.1% in November from 0.3% in October. The monthly increase in core prices slowed to 0.1% in November from 0.2% in October.…