Saint John, Charlottetown and Montreal have the highest tax burdens on new business amongst major Canadian cities, according to a new C.D. Howe Institute report. In “The 2014 C.D. Howe Institute Business Tax Burden Ranking,” authors Adam Found, Benjamin Dachis and Peter Tomlinson conduct...

Business property taxes are a major part of the tax burden on new business investment that can tip the balance in the competition for capital among Canadian cities and provinces, according to a report released today by the C.D. Howe Institute. In “What Gets Measured Gets Managed: The Economic...

When governments analyze tax policies aimed at attracting investment, they typically rely on a variable called the marginal effective tax rate (METR) on capital. The METR is a measure of the effective tax burden on new business investment. Recent Ontario budgets have presented estimates of the...

This paper describes the rent control program in Ontario and discusses the consequences of these controls. It indicates that rent controls caused both a small nominal decline and a large real decline in the per unit value of rental apartments, substantially reduced new rental housing starts,...

This paper analyzes economies of scale for two municipal services by considering how per-household municipal costs are affected by a municipality’s size. An econometric model is used to estimate costs associated with fire and police services using data for 445 municipalities in the Province of...

Canada’s charities are increasingly looking at ways to finance their non-profit activities through business income – in areas directly related to their charitable missions, and in areas that are not. Current legislation limits public foundations and charitable organizations to operating...

Ontario’s Green Energy and Green Economy Act subsidizes producers of renewable electricity by paying them far more for their output than the prevailing market price of electricity. Wind power receives a fixed electricity price of 13.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, and solar receives even larger...

Congestion on Canadian highways is having a significant negative economic impact on major Canadian cities. Rather than face the political challenge of introducing road tolls to discourage traffic, governments have chosen to build carpool lanes on urban highways, despite evidence that these lanes...