Costly and unfair: Stephen Harper's income-splitting scheme
During the last federal election, Stephen Harper promised that his Conservative government would introduce a new way to tax families with children after balancing the federal budget. We are likely to...
Bigger clawbacks to Old Age Security not the answer
Not content with the recent Harper government decision to trim program costs by raising the age of eligibility for Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (OAS/GIS) from 65...
Merit Canada’s low-wage, low-skills plan for the Canadian construction industry
Having successfully lobbied the Conservative government to repeal the federal Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act, Merit Canada now wants the Conservative government to enact what is ostensibly a...
Upstream: talking differently about health
Social factors play a significant role in determining whether we will be healthy or ill. Our health care is but one element of what makes the biggest difference in health...
Manning, Hudak, and the folly of attacks on labour
On September 16th, Preston Manning published an article on the recent defeat of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) at the hands of the conservative Liberal-National coalition in the Globe and...
Predistribution: the neglected side of the inequality debate
The high-profile Toronto Centre federal by-election features two well-known opposition candidates who agree that soaring income inequality, especially the fast-rising income share of the top 1% with all of its...
Unemployment is higher than you think
Every month, Statistics Canada comes out with the unemployment rate, and every month it gets a lot of attention. But the unemployment rate provides quite limited information about the actual...
Right-to-work laws are no solution to manufacturing job woes
A new study by the Fraser Institute argues that introduction of anti-union “right to work” laws in Canada would boost manufacturing output and jobs. While they are right that these laws,...
Meet the Broadbent Fellows
Though it’s true that political and policy debates can get wild and woolly, here at the Broadbent Institute we believe that always grounding arguments in the best available facts is...
Social well-being in Canada: how do the provinces measure up?
This post is the executive summary of a full-length report by the same name. In their book “The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone” Richard Wilkinson and Kate...
