Important changes are now underway to Canada Pension Plan “adjustment factors” that will increase the penalty for those who retire before age 65, and will raise the amount of additional CPP benefits available for those who delay retirement beyond 65. The new pension adjustment factors have...

(note: this report is in French) The Quebec Government's new tax plan - which would replace the across-the-board health contribution of $200 per taxpayer with large marginal tax increases on high-income earners as well as increased taxes on capital gains and dividends - may result in a...

In the last several years, the financial situation of the Quebec Pension Plan (QPP) has been deteriorating, a trend evidenced by the latest actuarial projections. In this e-brief, Senior Policy Analyst Alexandre Laurin points out how last year’s losses at the Caisse de dépôt et placement du...

Unusual economic and political circumstances surround the framing of the 2009 federal budget. A period of global spending outrunning productive capacity has ended with financial crisis and recession in much of the world, Canada included. The sudden slump has prompted demand for, and expectations...

Governments are major employers, and usually provide defined-benefit (DB) pension plans with full inflation indexing and generous early retirement provisions. Hence, changes in thinking about, and accounting for, the costs of DB pension plans have major implications for government finances. Both...

Tax measures announced in the latest Quebec budget strike a balance between good economic outcomes and attention to fairness in how tax burdens are shared. The author assesses Quebec’s budget measures according to their impacts on the tax burden and how well provincial taxes match citizens’...

The January 2009 federal budget proposed funding a “Canadian Secured Credit Facility” as part of an economic action plan. This Facility will allocate up to $12 billion to purchases of term asset-backed securities (ABS) for loans and leases on vehicles and equipment. The Facility will be...

British Columbia is on the right track with its controversial move to a harmonized sales tax (HST), according to this report. The authors say the shift to a value-added tax mirrors patterns in most of the developed world, and helped move the province from being a high tax, investment-unfriendly...

While Ottawa's proposed reforms to the pension plans of federal employees and MPs are a move in the right direction, the deep flaws in these plans require more fundamental revisions. The authors argue argue that more sweeping reforms are needed to achieve better funding and a more reasonable...

Canada is in the happy position of being able to address its fiscal challenges not just through eliminating deficits, but also by promoting growth in the economy and the tax base. This report takes a two-pronged approach: first, an accelerated plan to achieve budgetary surplus in three years;...