Substantial fiscal consolidation was achieved under the aegis of the 2003 Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act. While deficits widened anew in 2008 and 2009, against the backdrop of the global financial and economic crisis, efforts to reduce them have resumed since. To ensure...

Performance of fiscal policy, while good in international comparison, is not sufficient to prepare for future ageing-related spending increases. Subject to macroeconomic developments, the pace of consolidation could be more ambitious than currently planned, with a view to reducing the debt...

Although Canada remains in an advantageous fiscal position relative to many other OECD countries as the global economy recovers from the 2008/09 recession, the deterioration in the country’s public finances has been substantial. Years of spending increases above trend economic growth have led...

This paper explores the political economy of fiscal adjustment. It begins with an examination of the evidence for, and sources of, ‘deficit bias’, including political and governance factors, public attitudes, the role of financial markets and imprecision about which debt targets should be...

This paper presents a simulation model of the main budget aggregates of federal, provincial and territorial governments in Canada. The general approach is to use a cyclical indicator (output gap), estimate the sensitivity of government revenue and expenditure to this cyclical indicator using...