Public-sector employment is expanding faster than private-sector employment and self-employment. It is probably not entirely coincidental that our expanding public sector is being accompanied by poor real per capita GDP growth.
Relative to the long-term average performance, there is still substantial inflationary pressure in the Canadian economy.
Despite population growth and a market size now topping 40 million, we remain, compared to the U.S., a relatively non-competitive and closed business market dominated by duopolies and oligopolies.
In the post-pandemic world, health spending in Canada continues to be marked by the paradox of simultaneous feast and famine, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) release…
The recent bout of inflation and interest rate increases appear to have brought about a particular phase of economic hardship that has spilled over into personal lives, and that hardship appears to be across the board in terms of demographic and income groups.
A key issue is that Canadians accustomed to a long period of stable inflation and low interest rates have taken this for granted and built it into their economic expectations. The recent spike in inflation and especially interest rates has been an inconvenient lifestyle surprise.
We have not thought out the economic and social impacts of the change we are unleashing when one provides not just a computer but a machine that replicates the human mind. The future could be as dark as our most dystopian sci-fi stories.
The decadent, irresolute, and unfocused West appears to have dealt with COVID after all, managed to develop the better package of vaccines, is solving its energy security issues, and is now rapidly coming together in cooperative behaviour to push back against both Russian and Chinese government assertiveness.
There is nothing preventing the federal government from coming up with its own indicators based on available provincial data and creating a new grant that would complement the existing Canada Health Transfer, which would remain operating as it has.
We are in the curious position of being one of the biggest spenders on health in the developed world and yet marked by growing shortages of services as well as mediocre performance on many health indicator outcomes compared to countries that are spending less than we do.
