Tag: Fiscal transfers

Houston government sets sail without the fiscal albatross

Houston government sets sail without the fiscal albatross

Posted by | Oct 5, 2021 | , |

It’s interesting to consider how abruptly political fashions can change – how it’s all about balanced budgets until it isn’t. Take for example the recent debut of Nova Scotia’s new Progressive Conservative government. For the first time in more than two decades the new government isn’t putting on a show of recoiling in horror upon discovery of the true state of the province’s finances and issuing dire warnings of the need for urgent spending restraint. In that respect, the new PC government represents a sharp departure from the last Conservative administration that followed the shock and awe script when...

Read More
On health transfers, Houston needs to lead ‘Anybody but Conservative’ campaign

On health transfers, Houston needs to lead ‘Anybody but Conservative’ campaign

Posted by | Sep 14, 2021 | |

We’ve seen this play out in previous federal election campaigns. The provinces, constitutionally responsible for health services, unite to demand more federal help in this endeavour. The party in power at the federal level rejects the ask, while the opposition parties initially embrace it. But when the writ is dropped and one of the major opposition parties starts to waffle in its support the provinces fail to react. They put party loyalty ahead of the their populations’ need for adequate federal support for health care. When we observed this in the 2015 campaign and its aftermath it was mainly...

Read More
This election there’s real $$ in the health care debate

This election there’s real $$ in the health care debate

Posted by | Sep 3, 2021 | |

It’s not unusual for health care to be selected by the Canadian public as a top election campaign issue. What is new this go around is the willingness of the Liberals and Conservatives to talk about it. Unlike the vague generalities characterizing their health care commitments in the last two federal elections, the two parties most likely to form government have been quick with some big-ticket commitments. We can probably thank the pandemic for that. It revealed the deficiencies in the health care system and shattered the over-riding obsession with spending restraint. The main plank in the Conservative platform,...

Read More
Zombie Federalism Two: Following the money to the usual places

Zombie Federalism Two: Following the money to the usual places

Posted by | May 13, 2021 | |

My recent post on the controversial history surrounding the regional impacts of federal government taxing and spending promised to address claims by the National Post that the Trudeau Liberals are courting votes in Atlantic Canada with “Cadillac handouts.” The accusation stemmed from a single piece of data – that in 2019 federal spending in Atlantic Canada exceeded revenue collected by the equivalent of $6,400 per capita. The simple answer to whether that factoid proves the Liberals are spending big in this region to shore up electoral support is “no.” In fact, the dataset from which the 64-hundred-dollar exposé was...

Read More
Zombie federalism on the prowl again: Part One

Zombie federalism on the prowl again: Part One

Posted by | May 9, 2021 | |

John Quiggins’ 2010 book, Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us describes how neoliberal economic ideas that should died with the Great Recession of 2007-8 continue to live on. Readers of the Chronicle-Herald and the National Post have recently been exposed to something similar: zombie fiscal federalism, an ungenerous view of the country from the distant past that should have stayed buried. The outbreak of zombie fiscal federalism made the opinion section of the Herald on April 24. A full-page article by David MacKinnon, with the headline, “Economic Reality Will Wreck our East Coast sand castle” reported...

Read More

Richard Starr, The man behind the Point

About Richard

RICHARD STARR has had careers as a journalist, public servant, broadcaster, political staffer and freelance policy adviser. He is author of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, a former radio and TV producer and weekly newspaper editor, and the author of three non-fiction books. Starr has lived in Dartmouth for more than 30 years.

Subscribe to Starr’s Point

Support Provided by