Green bonds have become a fixture on global capital markets since they were first introduced in 2007. International development banks have been present in the green bond space from the outset and have been joined by governments, state enterprises, business enterprises, and financial institutions...

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bank of Canada has cut the overnight rate to 0.25 percent, the threshold it sees as the lower bound for its main policy instrument. At the lower bound, the Bank can no longer use its most direct tool to influence economic activity. The federal government...

This study considers the issue of Crown corporation governance and whether there is an “optimal” or best approach. The annual commercial operations of Canada’s Crown corporations are equivalent to over 7 percent of Canadian GDP, yet there has been surprisingly little over-arching research...

The Federal Government’s spending and borrowing cushioned the impact of COVID-19 on Canada’s economy, but have put national finances on an unsustainable path. The upcoming budget must make tough choices to put Canada on a path back to fiscal stability. As the health crisis abates, Canada...

Accessible and affordable childcare will play an oversized role in determining whether parents, primarily mothers, can return to their pre-COVID trajectories of employment and wages. That matters because growth in family income during the ’80s and ’90s came largely from rising female labour...

When the final accounting is done, federal debt is likely to be about $550 billion higher because of pandemic-related lockdowns in Canada and other countries. Most of the current discussion around the additional debt focusses on its sustainability – whether the debt can be rolled over...

The global financial crisis has had lasting impacts on the global economy and how we think about it. In its wake, the resulting surge in government debt in many countries has been accompanied by lower, rather than higher, interest rates and subdued inflation pressures. These events have sparked...

Canada’s municipalities deliver services that are critical to their citizens’ quality of life. Those services require revenue from taxes, fees and transfers from other governments. Yet municipal budgeting is opaque: in most of Canada’s major cities, non-experts cannot make the simplest...

The COVID-19 crisis and its impact on the revenues and expenses of all governments will make the fiscal capacity of Canada’s municipalities a pressing topic for years to come. All the more reason for municipalities to present budgets and other financial information that let Canadians...

This paper sets out to investigate two issues: first, it briefly provides a retrospective look at whether the stance of monetary policy was appropriate for hitting the Bank of Canada’s inflation target during 2018 and 2019, and second, it examines how to determine in real time whether monetary...