In advance of the Ford government’s first Ontario budget, this report examines the fiscal implications of the government’s actions so far, and the contradictions between those actions and repeated declarations on the need for fiscal prudence. The 2019 Ontario budget will reveal where this government is taking public services and finances. While the Ford government has announced that balancing the budget and reducing the province’s debt is a top priority, it has reduced revenues rather than increase them.
Government finance
In this issue:
In Part 2 of our feature on the state of the economy 10 years after the crisis, the Monitor heads to the bank. With radical ideas for reforming finance's retail, mortgage and investing functions from John Anderson, Michal Rozworski, Kevin Young and Alper Yagci, Roxanne Dubois and Brett Scott.
Here's a sample of what you'll find inside this issue:
With the country facing significant and unpredictable headwinds going into another federal election year, the 2019 Alternative Federal Budget (AFB) shows that Canada can boost competitiveness and encourage innovation by investing in people, not by giving corporations more tax cuts.
A decade after the worst financial crash since the Great Depression, a fragile recovery is obscuring threats—some new, some as old as capitalism—to Canadian workers and the broader economy. In this first part of a two-part feature on the fallout of that crisis, the Monitor looks at the financial flows, government revenue shortfalls and austerity plans that undermine our ability to handle another sudden shock.
Here's a sample of what you'll find inside this issue:
Illustration by Katie Raso
Ten years from the onset of the Great Financial Crisis, and eight after the “turn to austerity,” provides a useful vantage point. From here we can clearly see how austerity quickly succeeded the panic-driven experimentation with economic stimulus of the 2008-09 period.
Illustration by Katie Raso
When we think of a “boom town,” we often imagine a formerly sleepy rural town suddenly awash in wealth and economic expansion. It might surprise some to learn that for many municipalities in oil-producing regions in Saskatchewan, the costs of servicing the oil boom can outweigh the benefits.
Regina — When we think of a “boom town,” we often imagine a formerly sleepy rural town suddenly awash in wealth and economic expansion. It might surprise some to learn that for many municipalities in oil-producing regions in Saskatchewan, the costs of servicing the oil boom can outweigh the benefits.