I agree with you that making deficits a partisan issue isn't necessarily helpful, but given choices made by this government while simultaneously wrapping themselves in a sales pitch about economic prudence compared to the spendy left (of the CPC party rather than a nominal political spectrum) it's not irrelevant to discuss it either. "He could have cut government spending or raised tax rates during the recession. He could have done that, but it would have been stupid to have done that." He did narrow the tax base by taking two points of GST and introduced boutique tax credits while still claiming to have a plan to not run/eliminate deficits. Because that's what works politically when you have a lot of advertising money to tell people a story which doesn't have to be audited by the PBO. As for a falling debt/GDP ratio, it doesn't take long for that to go the other way with the right conditions. Ask Ireland. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/ireland/government-debt-to-gdp

For anyone visiting Ireland, Tim products can be found in some gas stations and small supermarket (Esso and Spar I think). http://www.yelp.ca/biz/tim-hortons-dublin-3

FW: "more that it could have been corrected but wasn't." Perhaps initiative is no longer valued at Statscan.

If there are mobile Quebec taxpayers then Ontario should be in the market for them, and not just the Anglos either. Start by partnering with VIA for additional capacity on the Montreal and Kingston corridors for say two departures every morning from Alexandria and Cornwall to arrive in MTL before 8.45am (as opposed to one and none at present), and give those municipalities the resources to expand both services in general and services to Francophones specifically. It's a province eat province world out there...

"She's not tenured, so if she's not doing her job, she will be out of work soon enough anyways." Am not familiar with employment law in DC and its application within academia (noting in particular the reference to "earned leave"), but I suspect that the asst prof had the impression that if she stayed home with the baby as proposed using 20/20 hindsight by many of the commenters to that article, "she will be out of work soon enough anyways."

I'm guessing the kid was prescribed ADD meds for lack of focus? God forbid we not produce another generation which designs redundant fields in application forms and other irritating repetitions which are not used for consistency checking but just because of laziness in information sharing. A better exercise might have been to require the student to write under each line why s/he felt the word should be capitalised, since the test does not screen out students who X random words and thus get some of them right.

One dreads to think how poor employment growth in Thunder Bay would be if Ontario and Toronto were not directing billions of dollars in subway, streetcar and GO train contracts to the Bombardier facility. While it is primarily an assembly facility and thus much of the headline cost goes elsewhere, the reality is that its position hundreds of kilometres from the nearest plausible customer for its products makes it a jobs programme in all but name.

It would be nice if Canadian companies could catch a rising US tide, but some will be excluded by protectionism. GO Transit is buying Idaho locomotives and Calgary Transit is buying light rail cars from California, but railcars from Bombardier Thunder Bay would be shut out from almost all passenger rail contracts in the US.

It's impossible to see this purely as an economic efficiency matter while the Buy America policy is levelled against Canadian operations like EMD-London. Canada should impose a similar policy on such items as will significantly impair US manufacturers where NAFTA lacunae exist. We have seen the disconcerting effect that exporting Canadian oil to China has on US politics, now we should demonstrate that Buy America is not a no-lose proposition either, and doing so during the next six months will garner the additional exposure of an election cycle. The policy should specify that any restrictions would automatically lapse when the American ones do.

Should the diversion of 416/905 area gamblers from First Nations-run Casino Rama to a provincial-only OntPlace casino be significant, this might have negative implications for the economy of Northern Ontario, given that many FN communities well north of Orillia receive distributions from Rama. (I learned this when the financials of Attawapiskat were published during the recent media coverage of their difficulties, which included a large chunk of change from that source)

(Stephen Gordon) "What is so special about the US that when their policy-makers screw up, the world must re-invent principles courses?" (Nick Rowe) "I teach Intro Economics, and have done for many years. I use the Canadian edition of Greg Mankiw's book." It strikes me that the second paragraph might go some way to explaining the first?

"I guess I’m shocked that Ontario’s opposition parties seem to think that a household earning 188,000 dollars a year can be bribed with only about 100 bucks." Rob Ford managed it with a lawyer I know for only 60 bucks.

People who live near hydro corridors might welcome the reduction on EMF from high voltage power lines that more efficient use might bring. I just wish the TTC would deal with the interference their streetcar overhead cause to AM reception (but only in some spots, oddly).

It's not simply a question of who we let in but what contribution they can make to dependency ratio immediately. Workers in regulated professions often face years of low incomes and taxation before gaining a foothold. The irony is that while I was immigrating for family reasons and was therefore fast-tracked, I would have been marginal on points for independent entry and would probably have had to take French courses to bring my points well above the cut-off. Once I landed however I had a full time job within six weeks because as an IT worker I didn't have some industry group in Ottawa to pay $500 per exam, which my Canadian wife with a foreign law degree had to.

The example reads pleasantly because the prof is increasing grades and who doesn't want to help him/her do that except grade inflation vigilantes? So you do an exam, you go home feeling pleased and expecting a grade based on your answers and on sample papers or other guidelines and then get a grade lower than you expect because the Prof arbitrarily decides the exam or the marking was *too easy*? Where's the moral hazard for the Prof/TA here? Let's not blame the students for irrational expectations *if their expectations were rational*. If they are going to be in effect graded on a curve, however that is achieved, say upfront that marks will be subject to both accuracy per the marking scheme but also subsequent "tweaks".

I figured out the axis thing - apparently the vertical is at 10pc not 0, should have spotted that, but it doesn't explain why Chile at 17pc isn't to the left of Iceland at 18pc. Transposition? I would point out that setting the CT axis start at 10 not 0 makes Ireland's CT rate look ridiculously low. If I wanted to see that kind of spin I'd call Berlin or Paris.

The Corp Tax axis on graph 1 doesn't read right to me. Ireland looks way further to the left than 12.5pc. Which OECD table was used, please?

Remember Ireland over the last three years. Academic economists can sign open letters or write blogs but they are deemed invalid unless: 1. They have a majority of academics as signatories. Don't bother weighting them either - for a government in trouble a lecturer in economics or business from a further education college will have an opinion worth citing if it runs their way. 2. A significant buy in from private sector economists. Trouble is, their employers won't let them sign. The phrase "ivory tower" will find its way from the Executive to the Fourth Estate a short time later. If 1 or 2 is found to be insufficient, appoint one of the minority as special adviser to the Minister for Finance. This will introduce discord into the family, not least when the government falls, he finds himself out of a job and looks for a professorship which leads to further drama over his research record. If *that* fails to derail them, any academic economist appearing on television will be labelled a "celebrity economist". While former Irish PM Garret Fitzgerald (himself an economist, albeit specialising in transport) affixed that label without naming names in the Irish Times this week, we can look closer to Canada at the vitriol Krugman attracts.

Jim Sentence: "before taxes, a couple with one earner making 100k is better off than a couple with two earners making 50k each." Especially in Ontario where the Health Premium penalises two income families over one earner with the same total taxable.

btgraff: "What will happen to NL when the oil runs out..." As a follow on - do equalization formulae and the political tinkering with programs like EI dissuade provinces like NL from creating future countercyclical fiscal room by running up surpluses in good times, because this erodes support in Ottawa for continuing support long enough to achieve sustainable fiscal balance?

1. Buy incandescent lights 2. Toronto Hydro says "you're using too much - buy LEDs!" 3. Buy LEDs 4. Toronto Hydro says "you're not using enough - we're raising the per kWh rate!"

"The bottom line is that Canada is still expanding debt. The government backstops virtually all new mortgages. Hence all the warnings from Mark Carney about how 10% of the population will go under if interest rates rise 1.5%. The problem will continue to get worse every year, but eventually we will hit the same wall where a lot of consumer debt can no longer be financed, let alone repaid. Then we'll understand a bit better what happened in the US. Australia is hitting this wall right now." Sounds like somebody's listening. Today's Financial Post: http://www.financialpost.com/personal-finance/Tougher+condo+mortgage+laws/4105580/story.html "Sources say rules now being discussed would add 100% of condominium fees to the list of expenses that is measured against income to decide whether a buyer can afford a mortgage. Currently, only 50% of the fee is considered. The move has the potential to squeeze thousands of consumers out of the market." Or maybe the market for high rise shoe boxes will come down to a more rational level?

oops - typo crept in there. The LD50 refers to "rats" not "rates"

Let's assume a person consumed 5L/day at 200mcg/day. That's 1 milligram of lithium, daily. By comparison, the LD50 (intraperitoneal) for rates is 156mg per kilogram weight. The patient in Mr. McClelland's link was consuming 1500mg/day. While clearly the symptoms might have presented at, say, an order of magnitude less that's still 150 times the amount a person consuming 5L a day from domestic supply at 200mcg/L. I think it's definitely worth a further look.

"Taxes that people don't see - the European VAT ... hurt, but they don't hurt that much." Except that also makes them easier to raise because the consumer isn't reminded on every receipt how much is being taken. Some people would think there would be a revolution if Canadians saw $23 in taxes levied on a $100 purchase (given how much hay the Tories made about reducing fed GST to 5%) and yet that is what is going to be hidden on Irish purchase receipts from 2014 (currently 21.5pc and 22pc from January 1 2013)