The Commentary released today its 2011 federal Shadow Budget with a five-step plan to end the flow of red ink in Ottawa ahead of the government's five-year timeline. In this paper, the authors show how Ottawa can return to budget surpluses in four years through more ambitious spending restraint...

A key question in Canada's pensions debate is whether Canadians will be able to maintain their living standards in retirement, and if policy needs to respond to the risk that some will experience painful declines. To date, it has been very difficult to estimate how current trends might affect...

Spending restraint is key to achieving a balanced federal budget over the next five years and should form part of Ottawa's March Budget. This Backgrounder demonstrates how to limit the rise in the federal debt by prudently reining in spending growth rather than raising taxes, so that past and...

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...

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;...

Early 2020 presents Canada with two challenges: amenic economic growth, and nervousness about the federal government's fiscal stewardship. The C.D. Howe Institute's Shadow Federal Budget for 2020 addresses both. It contains a number of measures to improve the rewards from work, saving and...

The cost of federal employees has risen rapidly, with total compensation per employee jumping nearly 5% per year on average over the past decade, says a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Premium Compensation: The Ballooning Cost of Federal Government Employees,” authors Alexandre...

Younger Canadians are at a material risk of picking up the tab should the soon-to-be expanded Canada Pension Plan experience investment return shortfalls, according to a new C.D. Howe Institute report. In “Bigger CPP, Bigger Risks: What “Fully Funded” Expansion Means and Doesn't Mean,”...

The C.D. Howe Institute's Shadow Federal Budget for 2019 looks past the overspending and deficits the federal government has adopted as its fiscal signature since its election in 2015. Instead, our focus is on ensuring the competitiveness and dynamism of the Canadian economy in the near and...