Storm Without End: The Fiscal Impact of COVID-19 on Canada and the Provinces finds that a large portion of Ottawa’s record-high spending during the pandemic did not relate directly to COVID-related health care or income support for individuals and businesses.
| By: Ben Eisen, Milagros Palacios, Fred McMahon and Alex Whalen
Catching Up with Canada: A Prosperity Agenda for Atlantic Canada is the first study from the Institute’s new Atlantic Canada Initiative. It finds that even though Atlantic Canada currently lags the rest of the country in several key economic indicators—including household incomes, GDP per capita and the employment rate, among others—the region could close the gap by pursuing pro-growth policy reforms similar to those enacted recently in Michigan and Ireland. In fact, if Atlantic Canada could achieve an inflation-adjusted economic growth rate of 1.6 per cent—0.9 percentage points above forecasted growth for the rest of Canada—the region would catch up with the rest of Canada within 20 years.
