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M:i-CANADA PLUS |
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"From the editor's desktop" by William Watson Sorry, the summary of this article is not available. "A mission statement for Canada" by Thomas J. Courchene Later this year, the IRPP will publish IRPP Senior Scholar Thomas J. Courchene's new book A State of Minds: Towards a Human Capital Future for Canadians. In this preview, he describes how the economic imperatives of the "global information revolution" are changing the policy environment, and he provides a mission statement for 21st-century Canada. In his view, all policy should be targeted directly or indirectly at increasing Canadians' human capital and enabling them to deploy it in Canada. While we should maintain many of our traditional policy goals, we should not be afraid to change any policy instrument, not even medicare, if the new policy environment means there are now better ways of achieving these goals. "Were 1990s labour markets really different?" by Garnett Picot, Andrew Heisz and Alice Nakamura In the early 1990s, observers of the labour market often pointed to emerging new phenomena. How many of these trends have survived the strong economic expansion of 1997 to 1999? The rise of self-employment, which was thought to result from a decline in full-time paid employment, has continued through the buoyant labour market of recent years. Job tenure has risen, not fallen, and the number of firms people can reasonably expect to work for over their career is, as a result, lower, not higher. The participation and employment rates of younger workers have remained below their former peaks, but this seems mainly due to more young people staying in school. Finally, quit rates remain lower than might be expected at this point in the economic cycle, a fact which may reflect increased employment anxiety, despite the low unemployment rate. "Telling the crackpots from the geniuses" by Randall K. Morck At the end of the first day of IRPP's recent conference "Creating Canada's Advantage in an Information Age," the University of Alberta's Randall K. Morck provided his reaction to the day's discussion of brain drain and industrial competitiveness. Here is an edited transcript of his comments on: taxes and the brain drain; economies of scale in R&D; the importance of competitive capital markets; and the growth of high-tech clusters. "Technological innovation and the causes and cures for unemployment" by Rick Szostak In explaining economic fluctuations, economists place too little emphasis on the bunching of technological innovations and on the differing macroeconomic effects of product and process innovations. The period 1925-34, for instance, saw the introduction of only one major new product, the electric refrigerator, but of several very important process innovations that reduced the demand for labour. Public policy should encourage the research, especially basic research, that leads to diverse innovations. It should also support public investment projects that can employ labour when for a time the bunching of innovations does lead to unemployment. "First steps into the labour market" How are Canada's bright young graduates coping in today's labour market, and how strong a pull do they feel from the booming US economy, with its high salaries, low taxes and myriad new career opportunties? At IRPP's May conference, "Creating Canada's Advantage in an Information Age," a panel of new and recent graduates addressed this very question. The panel was not by any means random, but their comments provided an interesting cross-section of views. Here is an edited transcript of their remarks. "20 years of Canadian competitiveness in Policy Options" This year marks Policy Options' 20th anniversary. To celebrate, we are running excerpts from the archives. In this issue, to accompany our cover story, we look at how different Policy Options' writers have looked at the problem of Canadian competitiveness over the years. With contributions by Tyson Macaulay, Roy Maclaren, Richard Bird, Marcel Côté and France St-Hilaire, Harold Crookell, Stuart Smith, John S. McCallum, Peter Lusztig, Richard Brown, Patricia Johnston, Andrew R. Moroz, Larkin Kerwin, Scott Tiffin, Rosabeth Moss Kanter. "The Celtic tiger: origins and prospects" by Dermot McAleese Over the last half decade, Ireland's economy has grown at the astonishing rate of more than eight per cent a year in real terms-a pace seldom experienced outside the Far East. What has made Ireland grow? A skilled work force, a US boom, and EU subsidies, yes, but more importantly, national policies that have focused on reducing debt, lowering taxes, keeping wage demands reasonable and Irish costs competitive, and opening up to investment and trade. The boom probably can't be kept going at Asian-like rates, but a reasonable pace probably can be sustained, and, in any case, Irish living standards have now caught up to the rest of Europe, so rapid growth is not quite as urgent a necessity as it once was. "Happy birthday, AIT!" by Daniel Schwanen The Agreement on Internal Trade, which came into effect five years ago this summer, has achieved good success in a number of areas. Much work has been done in moving toward mutual recognition of professional standards, and significant use has been made of the dispute settlement mechanisms provided in the Agreement. On the other hand, in a number of areas progress has been slow. The Agreement's fifth anniversary is a good occasion to push for better compliance with its existing provisions, and for a widening and deepening of its reach. "The view from the south: Cut marginal tax rates at every income level" by David R. Henderson If Canadians want a better performing economy, the only way to get it is with substantial tax cuts. The federal government's decision to re-index the personal income tax system is an encouraging move in the right direction, but the cuts in income tax rates promised in the last budget are too little and too slow. Federal income tax rates should be cut by a third as quickly as possible. This would result in a revenue loss for Ottawa (though the rate cut would reduce several sources of revenue drain that currently afflict the system) but that could be offset by cuts in spending, especially in grants to the provinces, which mainly encourage economic inefficiency. "Retire mandatory retirement" by C.T. Gillin and Thomas R. Klassen Mandatory retirement laws are institutionalized ageism. Both because they are a violation of human rights and because if all baby boomers stop working at age 65 the retirement income system will come under great stress, mandatory retirement laws should themselves be retired. The main argument against doing so-that it will create unemployment among young people-is not persuasive. Such laws have been rejected in the United States, and yet for the last two decades the US has had much lower unemployment than we have. "Canada needs a national school meals program" by R. Brian Howe and Katherine Covell When children go to school hungry or malnourished, they have a hard time learning. That's a violation of their rights under a number of international conventions Canada has signed, and it's a waste of society's educational resources. Since malnourishment cuts across income classes, and can be the result of neglect and ignorance as well as poverty, we need a universal program that gets nutritious meals to all students who need them. School boards, provincial and local governments and the voluntary sector can all help to solve this problem, but only the federal government can take a leadership role in assuring that children get adequate nutrition all across Canada-a goal that should rank high on any Children's Agenda. "The Donner prize winner" by David Gratzer For the second year in the event's two-year history, Policy Options is pleased to present the acceptance remarks of the Donner Prize Winner for the best Canadian book on public policy, on this occasion for the year 1999. The winner was David Gratzer for his book Code Blue: Reviving Canada's Health Care System, published by ECW Press. Mr. Gratzer, whom Policy Options' readers will know for his piece in our May issue on "How I'd fix health care," received the Prize and the $25,000 award that goes with it at a dinner at Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario on May 4th. Book review: Edmund P. Fowler reviews Voluntary initiatives: The new politics of corporate greening by Robert E. Gibson (ed.). Sorry, the summary of this article is not available. |
