Economy

In this post, Canada Fact Check takes a look at five key issues facing the newly elected Trudeau government for the period leading up to, and including, the early-Spring budget. Infrastructure The new Liberal government’s top priority will be to quickly implement its high profile infrastructure program. Trudeau says a Liberal government will run deficits for three straight years and will double spending on infrastructure to stimulate economic growth. According to a Liberal policy paper, the Liberal fiscal...

    What is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) ? Canada, U.S. and Mexico have long had special access to each other’s markets under NAFTA. Instead of a group of three as under NAFTA, twelve countries would share in the advantages of TPP membership. Broadly speaking, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is similar to NAFTA in that it involves pledges to reduce or eliminate tariffs on a wide range of goods and services. It also sets out rules for...

With at least one poll suggesting Tom Mulcair’s New Democratic Party is within reach of securing a historic NDP majority government, the debate between the two opposition parties over fiscal policy has become considerably more pointed. In this post, Canada Fact Check takes a look at the latest polling numbers and then assesses the fiscal positions being staked out by the Liberals and NDP. First, the most recent polling numbers. The latest polls A Forum Research poll for...

In a previous post, Canada Fact Check took a look at the Harper government economic record and began an examination of the three economic legs of the Conservative economic plan: 1) reduced corporate taxes; 2) Canada as an “energy superpower”; and 3) an aggressive approach to balancing the budget rooted in curtailing government spending. In today’s post, Canada Fact Check assesses the economic impact of the Conservative government's policies aimed at turning Canada into an "energy super power”....

Last Friday, Statistics Canada released its jobs report for July, 2015 – the first such release during the election period. Employment was up a bit in July as compared to June (+6,600) and the unemployment rate stayed at 6.8% for the sixth straight month. Compared with a year earlier, employment had increased by 161,000 (or 0.9%), primarily because of the growth in full-time work. Provincially, employment in Ontario was virtually unchanged in July. Compared with 12 months earlier, employment in the province...