Loneliness among older Albertans has improved since pandemic in 2022, but many still lack connection...
Alberta’s Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) program provides income support to those with disabilities that substantially limit their ability to work. Whether these benefit levels meet basic living needs remains an ongoing policy question.
Is a post-pandemic move to enable the virtual delivery of primary delivering on its promise of improved access for patients?
Recent survey of Albertans shows older adults who own their own homes may also face considerable financial housing insecurity.
This essay will lay out the four largest components of fiscal policy—taxation, purchases, transfers, and borrowing—and explain why they matter and how they connect to Canada’s economic challenges. While we mention provinces, territories, and municipalities at various points to offer a more complete picture of Canada’s overall fiscal landscape, our focus is mostly on the federal government. Before concluding, we pose some policy questions worthy of further discussion.
The federal government identifies who is experiencing poverty by comparing household incomes to a measure called the Poverty Line. What does this poverty line measure? Lifting people out of poverty is an important public policy goal. Some public policies are more successful at reducing poverty than others. Identifying which approaches are most successful is the task of policy analysts. Their conclusions depend at least in part on how poverty is defined. But that is controversial.
In his 2021 Book, Mark Carney quotes favourably from the works of economist John Manyard Keynes. Keynes famously favoured updating one’s thinking when the facts change, even if doing so meant disagreeing with an earlier self. When someone suggested this might be inconsistent, Keynes replied: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do sir?” Developments in military spending and global democracy indicate a changing world. Carney’s recent travels and speech in Davos suggest he is updating his view of Canada’s national interest.
Since 2023, the Alberta Securities Commission (the “ASC”) has sponsored an annual roundtable composed of leading Canadian capital markets scholars to discuss the most important evolving themes in contemporary Canadian securities law (the “Banff Roundtable”). The purpose of this synopsis is to more broadly share the discussions that occurred at the 2025 Banff Roundtable. It is not intended to reflect only consensus positions of the participants, but to provide an accessible overview to the topic and the points of agreement and disagreement among the attendees.
This policy brief explains recent developments in U.S. trade policy and the legal authority on which Trump is relying to pursue his foreign policy goals. It starts by reviewing the basics of trade policy making in the United States, including the clear mandate in the U.S. Constitution for Congress to have exclusive power to regulate trade. It examines why Congress delegated some of this authority to the president and explores the key tariff authorities currently being used or considered and which set of tariffs will impact Canada. It will also look at what options are available to U.S. trading partners as they manage a highly protectionist U.S. market.
Since returning to office in January 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed far reaching tariffs on imports from every country in the world. Although he has continued to rely on legal authorities that he invoked during his first term, in particular section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, Trump has broken new ground by relying on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 as the basis for his most sweeping actions. Over a dozen lawsuits have been filed in U.S. courts challenging the legality of these tariffs. Most were filed in April and May and thus challenge only the Liberation Day and fentanyl tariffs, although the resolution of those cases could have implications for other IEEPA-based tariffs. This policy brief explains these cases, including the legal claims raised, their current status, and the implications going forward should the challenges succeed.
Canadian productivity growth is falling behind historical trends and other countries, resulting in weaker competitiveness and an imperiled standard of living. Canadian productivity must be improved if trade is to diversify beyond the now less-reliable U.S. market. Tax reform must be an element of a multi-faceted effort to bolster productivity growth. Reforms should lower the economic cost of taxation and sharpen incentives to work, train, save, innovate and invest – key ingredients of productivity.
Speeches from the throne capture a government’s major policy commitments. Comparing those of the last Trudeau and new Carney governments reveals a sharp change in policy direction between the two.
Canada’s productivity is lagging behind that of the U.S. and other advanced economies. Between 2001 and 2021, labour productivity increased by 19 percentage points less in Canada than in the U.S. (Gu and Willox, 2023), coinciding with a decline in investment per worker (Gu, 2024). A lack of competition, along with various constraints such as heavy regulation and interprovincial trade costs, is frequently cited to explain the productivity lag of Canadian firms (Rogers, 2024). This note proposes a different perspective: while abundant natural resources and privileged access to the U.S. market are often seen as key economic strengths for Canada, we examine how these very advantages may also act as constraints on productivity growth.
This paper investigates the effects of budgetary imbalances on various fiscal variables using time series data from Alberta spanning over half a century. Our empirical analysis reveals Alberta responds to budget deficits by cutting program spending and raising tax revenue. The results indicate that in response to a one percentage point increase in the current budget deficit to GDP ratio, Alberta’s governments have cut program spending by 0.24 percentage points and raised tax revenue by 0.06 percentage points the following year. These results imply that about 80 percent of the short-term fiscal responses to budgetary imbalances appear on the spending side of the provincial government budget. The empirical results of this study provide evidence of the asymmetric effects of fiscal imbalances on tax revenue and government program spending in the province. We also find that the provincial governments’ spending response to the budget deficit depends on whether oil prices are predicted to increase or decrease.
In this paper we evaluate the housing success realized by youth enrolled in a large, community-based housing program true to the philosophy of Housing First and attentive to the specific needs of youth. We examine the program in a non-experimental setting and so provide evaluations of the practical usefulness of such programs to system operators and policymakers. Our examination makes use of administrative data sets describing the experiences of youths with a wide variety of personal characteristics and homeless experiences. We evaluate rates of success in housing programs over a minimum of one year and for up to seven years. Evaluating success over a long time period makes it possible to define success as not only retaining housing but also establishing housing outside the system of care and so without case management.
Food provided by a food bank is a close substitute for food purchased in a retail store. This characteristic of food bank services means that threats to one’s ability to maintain housing – increased rents, job loss, inadequate income supports, high prices generally – can be expected to result in growing reliance on food banks. This policy brief derives, presents, and evaluates preliminary results from an ongoing study of how individuals and families respond to shocks to their budgets that present challenges to their ability to maintain housing. We hypothesize that such a shock sets in motion an effort by a household to conserve income for the payment of rent and so a coincident increase in its use of food banks. By linking administrative datasets reporting food bank use and entry into homeless shelters by uniquely identified people, we show how reliance on food banks increases as individuals and families near the date when housing is lost. This research has the potential for identifying periods of intervention that may prevent homelessness.
