Every day across this vast country of ours, groups of people get organized and work together to make their neighbourhood, city, province and nation a better place.

Often invisible and unheralded, these efforts are actually the wellspring of social progress.  As anthropologist Margaret Mead notes in her well-loved quotation, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”  

The Supreme Court of Canada recently released its highly anticipated decision in Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v Saskatchewan. In bold and sweeping Reasons for Judgment on behalf of a 5-2 majority, Justice Rosalie Abella overturned the Court’s previous jurisprudence and recognized a constitutionally protected right to strike under section 2(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Section 2(d) of the Charter guarantees the freedom of association.

In the run-up to the delayed federal budget, there is a strange disconnect between fiscal policy and our changing economic circumstances. Balancing the budget seems to remain the key political priority, as if nothing had changed.

But the collapse of oil and other resource prices has changed a lot. Most notably, the Bank of Canada has, unexpectedly, cut interest rates to take out “insurance” against a serious slump in our resource-dependent economy. TD Economics forecast slow growth of just 2.0% this year, and have projected that unemployment will rise by 0.2 percentage points in the next few months.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said that he will not run a deficit unless and until Canada falls into an outright recession, something we would know only in hindsight.

The Conservative Party of Canada’s proposal to double contribution limits for Tax-Free Savings Accounts (TFSA) has received inadequate critical scrutiny to date. This gap may stem from the notion that little revenues will be lost and the perception that most taxpayers would benefit. Both beliefs are erroneous.

Read our new study, authored by Broadbent Institute Policy Fellow Rhys Kesselman, Canada Research Chair in Public Finance with the School of Public Policy at Simon Fraser University.