The goal of this paper is to compare the long-term fiscal outlook in Canada and the United States using a simple measure of the sustainability of federal fiscal policy. The paper begins by explaining that standard Canada-US fiscal comparisons can be misleading because they do not take account of...

Recent studies on vertical fiscal imbalance (VFI) in Canada subscribe to a definition of VFI that is based on the mismatch in structural budget balances between the federal and provincial/territorial levels of government. In this framework, projected budget balances illustrate the path of VFI....

Recently, stochastic simulation models have been used to analyse issues related to federal fiscal policy in Canada. These models capture the uncertainty inherent in the economy and in the budget process by providing a range of possible outcomes, along with probabilities of achieving desired...

This paper provides an update to the King and Jackson (2000) study, which analysed the fiscal implications of population ageing using a debt-to-GDP projection framework. Since the publication of the original study, there have been a number of important fiscal policy changes implemented by all...

The Debt Repayment Plan introduced in the 1998 federal budget aims to keep the federal debt-to-GDP ratio on a "clear, downward profile". This paper examines alternative strategies for implementing such an objective. The analysis is undertaken within a stochastic simulation framework. The fiscal...