Centre for Future Work

There’s been a lot of discussion in Canada lately about productivity. The productivity statistics have been disappointing since the end of COVID lockdowns. This is partly due to the continuing aftershocks of the pandemic, including big changes in the occupational makeup of employment, working from home, and other adjustments. 

But the problem also reflects the degradation of job quality in many sectors of the economy. Too many jobs are precarious, irregular, poorly paid – with no opportunity for workers to improve skills, gain experience, and then be rewarded for their productivity. In the extreme, in the rapidly-growing gig economy, workers spend much of their day literally doing nothing – and getting paid nothing for it, too.

In this commentary, originally published in the Toronto Star, Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford argues that requiring platform businesses to pay their workers at least minimum wage for all hours worked, would not just be fair: it would also be a powerful spur to better productivity.

Gig Economy Unfair Work Practices Undermining Canada’s Productivity By Jim Stanford

Many economists, myself included, worry about Canada’s weak productivity growth since the COVID pandemic. The Bank of Canada’s Deputy Governor even called it a national “emergency.”

That’s a bit alarmist. Most industrial countries have recorded strange drops in productivity since the pandemic – the aftereffects of enormous disruptions in employment and labour supply. Measurement problems (arising from emergency wage subsidies and the spread of working from home) cast some doubt on the statistics. And there are early signs productivity is finally normalizing.

Nevertheless, we certainly need better productivity to underpin faster economic growth and higher incomes. It would also help cool off inflation. There are many ways to tackle the problem. But one of the most obvious is to stop a growing practice whereby hundreds of thousands of workers literally spend hours of each day doing nothing – and get paid nothing for it.

Work through digital platforms (such as ride-hail and food delivery) has expanded dramatically. Statistics Canada recently reported that 927,000 people worked through digital platforms in 2023, 3.3% of working-age Canadians. Some do it as their main job, some as a ‘side hustle’.

Consumers like the convenience and low cost. For newcomers and others who struggle to find better jobs, it’s a way to earn at least something. 70% of ride share and food delivery workers are racialized, and most are young.

But the wages are low and unpredictable – and for much of their day, platform workers literally get paid nothing. Because the platforms treat workers as so-called ‘contractors’, not waged employees, they evade normal responsibilities: like minimum wage, workers’ compensation, EI, and CPP.

Workers are directed and paid by the platforms. They do not control prices. They don’t know in advance what they will be paid. They cover their own costs (including car, gas, data, and insurance). Most relevant for Canada’s productivity, they aren’t paid while waiting for their next job, or travelling to pick up a meal or a passenger.

City of Toronto data indicates ride share workers typically spend half their total working time waiting, unpaid, for jobs, or travelling to them. Waiting times are likely worse in food delivery. The number of platform workers is far greater than can be efficiently supported by the available work – yet desperate workers stick with it in hopes of earning enough to eat. Eventually, most give up: gig worker turnover is enormous, often over 100% per year.

Since waiting is seemingly ‘free’, the platforms have no incentive to reduce it. In fact, they prefer an excess of available workers, since it speeds response times for customers. And their algorithmic pricing strategies push down pay even further if drivers are desperate enough to work for less.

Apart from being unfair, this creates a horrible disincentive for productivity growth. These workers literally do nothing for half their time. If the almost one million platform workers in Canada actually worked all their days, rather than just half of them, national productivity would improve noticeably.

There are two ways to reduce the wasted days and wasted nights of platform work. One is to require platforms (like other employers) to pay minimum wage for all hours (New York City does this). Platforms would reduce excess labour so those working are more efficient.

The other is to cap the number of workers (as Toronto does with ride-hail licenses), so those working can earn a decent wage. Not surprisingly, the platforms resist either solution fiercely.

The time wasted by digital platforms is just the most extreme example of a broader problem afflicting Canada’s productivity. Businesses degrade the pay and stability of work with precarious employment strategies like labour hire, contracting out, and gigs. Their goal is to cheapen labour, and shift the risks of market fluctuations onto the backs of workers.

But when labour is cheaper and more ‘flexible,’ employers have little incentive to improve genuine efficiency: through machinery and technology, better skills, and upgraded work systems. In the extreme, if labour is free (as is true for half of platform workers’ days), there’s no limit to how much can be wasted.

Genuine productivity depends on valuing workers and their time: treating labour as a scarce resource, not a throw-away input, and allocating it wisely. Employers pay much more attention to this task when the cost of wasting workers’ time is significant.

A powerful way to promote productivity, therefore, is to raise the price of labour – starting by paying platform workers at least minimum wage for the time they sit idly waiting for another order. Their employers will quickly find more efficient ways to match labour with customer demand. That will free hundreds of thousands of people to do something more productive. And anything is more productive than sitting around doing nothing.

The post To Improve Productivity, Stop Paying People Nothing to Do Nothing appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

As Parliament prepares to receive the 2024-25 federal budget, it is interesting to compare the sharply different fiscal trends that have emerged in Canada and the U.S.

Despite predictable Conservative and business complaints about ‘overspending’, Canada’s federal deficit is very small in macroeconomic terms – and one of the smallest among major industrial countries. In 2022, according to the most recent OECD cross-country data, the general government balance in Canada ranked 9th best among the OECD’s 37 member countries as a share of GDP.(1)

Canada’s strong fiscal position is especially clear in comparison to the U.S. Canada’s federal deficits have been much smaller than in the U.S.

Deficits can be measured in two fundamental ways: on a national accounts basis (using data from the quarterly economic accounts), and on a public accounts basis (using data from the government’s official financial reports). The main difference is that the latter includes various non-cash factors: such as changes in long-run actuarial liabilities. Official budgets can also manipulate the timing of different revenue and expense items – for example, by pre-booking future expenses to capture all of the future impact of a new policy announcement in the current year’s budget. National accounts measures, in contrast, measure direct current flows of funds into and out of government: what is actually spent and received in a particular quarter or year. National accounts measures are more directly comparable across countries, since they are less affected by specific accounting strategies.

This table compares the Canadian and U.S. federal deficits using both national accounts actuals (for calendar years) and public accounts actuals (for fiscal years(2)). 

On a national accounts basis, the federal deficit in the U.S. in calendar 2023 (7.1% of U.S. GDP) was almost 11 times larger than the equivalent measure for Canada (0.66% of GDP).

On a public accounts basis the actual deficit recorded in the U.S. in the 12 months to September 30 2023 (6.27% of GDP) was almost 8 times larger than the actual federal deficit recorded in the 9 months ending December 31 2023 (0.81%). Since the Canadian 2023 public accounts actual does not include the year-end (at which time the government typically makes many adjustments to its treatment of various revenues, expenses, and non-cash items), the final deficit reported for fiscal 2023 will differ from this number. But even using prior year’s data, the U.S. public accounts federal deficit for fiscal 2022 was over 4 times larger than the Canadian deficit.

The preceding figures illustrate the comparative size of the two countries’ federal deficits, and their evolution over the last three years, on both national accounts and public accounts bases. Both countries reduced their federal deficits from 2021 (still affected by COVID) to 2022 – though Canada’s deficit started off smaller, and fell further in 2022. By either measure, the U.S. deficit got larger in 2023, while Canada’s remained small.

The comparison between the two countries’ deficits is all the more instructive, given the difference in economic trajectories between the two countries. U.S. economic growth has remained quite strong, and their unemployment rate has remained significantly lower. Both countries have been grappling with high interest rates imposed by their respective central banks. In the U.S. case, however, the impact of those rates on household finances and consumer spending has been muted by the fact that most mortgage-holders have long-term fixed-rate mortgages, and hence have not experienced the same upsurge in interest costs as many Canadian households. Interestingly, inflation has followed a similar deceleration in both countries since peaking (at similar highs) in mid-2022.

The claim that Canada has large deficits resulting from a big-spending federal government is simply false. And the parallel claim that this deficit has caused both high inflation and high interest rates (imposed to fight that inflation) is also false. Canada’s inflation and interest rates have not been consistently any better than in the U.S., where deficits are many times larger.

Superior U.S. economic performance suggests that significant deficits might actually be helpful in the current moment, not harmful. They support job-creation, investment, economic growth, and real incomes – helping to counter the contractionary impact of high interest rates. Orthodox economists will argue that fiscal policy should not run against monetary policy, but that view depends on the assumption that post-COVID inflation was the result of excess demand pressures (which government spending would only worsen). If we accept that post-COVID inflation was caused by other factors (including initial supply disruptions and shortages, pent-up consumer demand when lockdowns ended, the 2022 world oil price shock, and record surges in corporate profits), then the demand-supporting effects of government deficits can be seen as welcome, not contradictory.

From a macroeconomic perspective, therefore, Canada’s federal deficit should probably be bigger, not smaller. But that won’t stop the predictable attacks from Conservatives about the evils of bloated government spending. Those attacks should be discounted.

1.  Source: “Net saving of general government,” OECD Data Explorer.
2.  Fiscal years run from April 1 through March 30 in Canada, and October 1 through September 30 in the U.S., so they cover different time periods. The 2023 fiscal year in the U.S. refers to the fiscal year that ended September 30 2023 (covering most of 2023), while it refers to the fiscal year ending March 31 2024 in Canada (also covering most of 2023). The table reports only 9 months data for Canada for fiscal 2023.

The post Comparing Deficits in Canada and the U.S. appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

Rapidly rising food prices have been a major component of the cost-of-living crisis affecting Canadian households in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. Food price inflation was significantly faster than overall inflation in 2022 and 2023. Food inflation has slowed more recently (to 2.4% year-over-year by March 2024, the slowest in 3 years), but food affordability is a major concern.

Low-income households spend a much larger share of their total income on food than higher-income families: the lowest-income quintile of households spends 12.8% of total spending on groceries, versus just 6.5% for the highest-income quintile (data from Statistics Canada Table 11-10-0223-01). High food prices thus impose a particular burden on low- and middle-income households. Similar inequalities are visible across the various regions of Canada – none more so than in Canada’s north, where limited competition and very high transportation costs contribute to shocking grocery prices.

These factors were explored recently in a powerful documentary, “Who’s Minding the Store?”, produced by CBC’s flagship investigative program, The Fifth Estate. Led by veteran correspondent Steven d’Souza, the documentary covered several dimensions of the food price crisis. Working in partnership with reporters with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), the program revealed shocking details of food-price-gouging in isolated northern communities. It also featured detailed discussion with Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford on the economic and financial forces driving food prices – including the record-high profits being captured by the large grocery chains that dominate Canadian food retailing.

The full documentary can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuz5SgcHnrQ.

A summary of the film’s main findings is published at: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/rising-food-prices-canada-north-1.7122481.

For the latest on grocery store profits (which set a new all-time record in 2023, despite weakening sales and the slowdown in inflation), see the Centre for Future Work’s recent report on the resilience of corporate profits in Canada in 2023. 

The post Documentary Shines Light on Excessive Food Prices in Canada appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

The renowned independent broadcasters at CANADALAND have launched a new series of podcasts (part of their Commons series) exploring issues in work, employment, and fairness. The pilot of the series, titled ‘The War on Workers,’ features an extended conversation with Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford, about the epochal changes in labour policies, power relationships, and expectations that have reshaped Canadian work and workers over the past generation.

Speaking with host Arshy Mann, Jim explains how employers came to hold the upper hand in determining the conditions and pay of work – buttressed by policies (like anti-union laws and cutbacks in Employment Insurance) from employer-favouring governments. The rise of gig work and labour-hire agencies reinforce the insecurity faced by workers.

This podcast will have lasting value as an information and educational resource on structural imbalances in Canada’s labour market. Download the full episode here: https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/work-1-the-war-on-workers/.

The post CANADALAND Podcast Explores the ‘War on Workers’ appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

B.C.’s economy has always depended on its rich forests—from First Nations communities, through the early settler economy, to modern forestry practices and technologies.

But in recent years the industry has been buffeted by a perfect storm of environmental, economic, and geopolitical challenges. Total production has declined by up to half in recent years, with devastating effects on employment, output, exports, and taxes. Dozens of remote and regional forest communities are unsure of their future, unless a viable and sustainable future for forestry can be achieved. 

The three major unions representing forestry workers in B.C. (including Unifor, the United Steelworkers, and the PPWC) recently came together to host a special Forestry Summit. The Summit aimed to bring attention to the challenges facing the industry, and demand a concerted strategy by government and all industry stakeholders to stabilize and sustain the industry on a sustainable, high-tech foundation. The Summit featured a major report, co-authored by Jim Stanford (Director of the Centre for Future Work) and Ken Delaney (from the Canadian Skills Training and Employment Coalition). The report describes the forestry crisis, and maps out the major elements of a sector strategy to preserve jobs and workplaces – consistent with both conservation objectives and First Nations stewardship of treaty and traditional lands.

The report proposes a series of key reforms to develop and implement a strong sector strategy for a modern, value-added, sustainable provincial forest industry. The strategy consists of four major elements: 

1. Creation of a Permanent Province-Wide Forestry Sector Council
2. Development of a Province-Wide Plan for Stable, Sustainable, Economic Fibre Supply
3. Forest Adjustment Bureau to Redesign and Integrate Worker and Community Adjustment Supports
4. Eight-Point Strategy to Maximize Value-Added from Stable Fibre Harvesting

Please see the full 54-page report, A Better Future for B.C. Forestry: A Sector Strategy for Sustainable, Value-Added Forest Industries.

Summary slides highlighting the major findings of the report can be downloaded here. They are also available in French.

For more information on the Fighting for our Future campaign launched by the three unions, please visit https://bcforestryworkers.ca/. 

The post Building a Sustainable, High-Value-Added Forestry Sector in B.C. appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

Statistics Canada has released year-end data on corporate financial performance for 2023. The new data confirm that corporate profits remain elevated relative to pre-COVID norms, despite the stalling of economic growth in 2023, largely due to weak consumer demand conditions caused by two years of high interest rates. After-tax corporate profits across the financial and non-financial sectors of the economy totaled $577 billion for the year. That was down just 3% from all-time record profits booked by corporate Canada in 2022 – the same year inflation peaked at over 8%. The moderation in profits (both in absolute dollars and as a share of GDP) last  year contributed to the rapid easing of inflationary pressures. But profits remain unusually high compared to pre-pandemic years: in absolute dollars, as a share of total business revenue, and relative to GDP. This indicates that corporations are continuing to profit from supply chain disruptions, high energy prices, and other pandemic after-shocks. These excess profits remain a key factor in the stubborn inflation which continues to roil Canada’s macroeconomy.

Please read the full 8-page analysis by Jim Stanford, Director of the Centre for Future Work.

The post Canadian Corporate Profits Remain Elevated Despite Economic Slowdown appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

The beginning of 2024 brought some good labour market news for a change: average real wages in Canada increased in 2023, reversing some of the damage from post-COVID inflation. After two years of lagging well behind inflation, wage growth picked up in 2023, reaching almost 5% for the year. Combined with a marked slowdown in inflation (to just under 4% for the year), that produced a 1% increase in the real purchasing power of average wages.

Real wages are higher than when the pandemic began, and have approximately regained their pre-COVID trend. From 2011 through 2019, real wages grew by slightly less than 1% per year. The 2023 rebound in real wages left them at a point just slightly below where they would have been if the pandemic had not occurred, and real wages had simply continued growing at that 2011-19 pace.

The temporary spike in wages (both nominal & real) that occurred in 2020 was a composition effect: resulting from the disproportionate loss of lower-wage jobs in the lockdowns (which meant that the average wage for those workers who remained employed seemed higher). That artificial effect was unwound as those low-wage industries reopened after the lockdowns. But then inflation roared to life, and started to further undercut real wages—until 2023.

It is interesting to note that the median real wage (earned by workers at the exact mid-point of the income distribution) grew faster in 2023: by 2.5%. That implies a slightly narrowing of wage inequality in Canada’s labour market last year, with lower-wage workers getting slightly stronger increases. In the long-run, however, median wages have increased more slowly than average wages, indicating that higher-income workers (including salaried professionals) have received disproportionate gains (thus pulling up average wages faster than median wages).

The encouraging growth in real incomes for workers in 2023 confirms that the efforts of Canadian workers to protect their purchasing power are having effect. This includes the efforts of unionized workers to offset previous real wage cuts through collective bargaining demands and more frequent strikes. On average, however, real wages grew more slowly for unionized than non-unionized workers – mostly because many union members have not yet had a chance to renegotiate their contracts since the take-of of inflation in 2021 and 2022. As more contracts expire and are renegotiated, we can expect continued challenges in contract talks, as workers strive to both make up for past real wage losses, and protect their real wages against continued expected inflation in the years ahead.

Moreover, the real gains experienced last year were not universal. Especially in public sector occupations (including education, health care, and public administration), nominal wage gains barely matched even the slower inflation experienced last year. Indeed, in education average real wages fell again in 2023 (by two-thirds of a percentage point). This means that public sector workers continue to suffer from accumulated real wage losses since the pandemic hit, with purchasing power up to 4% lower than it was in 2019.

Of course, what is good news for (many) workers will be interpreted as a danger sign by employers and the Bank of Canada. There is no evidence that wages caused the outbreak of post-COVID inflation. But this encouraging wage growth will nevertheless be used as an excuse to continue suppressing domestic growth and job-creation, including by keeping interest rates at current high levels for longer. That may tip Canada into an official, ‘technical’ recession (traditionally defined by two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth). But in the Bank of Canada’s view, that is a worthwhile price to pay if it helps to restrain wages and thus restore lower inflation.

We can expect the complaints about wages, and predictions of imminent but mythical ‘wage-price spiral’, to get louder in the coming months. However, real wages are only catching up to inflation, not causing it, and regaining long-term trends. Workers have a right to expect their real standard of living to improve gradually over time, on the strength of technology, efficiency, and strong labour force participation. Instead of scapegoating workers, macroeconomic and monetary policy should target the true causes of post-COVID inflation—and that clearly has not been labour.

The post Real Wages are Recovering… and That’s Good News! appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

Each year the Globe and Mail newspaper publishes a compendium of charts and graphs submitted by Canada’s leading economists, compiled by business journalist Jason Kirby. The set constitutes a very visual guide to the myriad of issues that will shape Canada’s economic trajectory in the year ahead. Reposted below is the submission from Jim Stanford, Director of the Centre for Future Work, on the upsurge in work stoppages recorded as Canadian workers fight to rebuild their real wages after the outbreak of inflation that followed the COVID pandemic.

Workers Strike Back By Jim Stanford

Some observers called 2023 the Year of the Strike, and at times that moniker was fitting. Across a wide range of industries, workers hit the picket lines to support demands for pay increases that kept up with surging inflation. Over the first nine months of 2023 (the latest data at time of writing), Canada lost a total of 2.2 million work days to work stoppages – the highest since 2005. To the end of 2023, total days lost will be even higher: more than 2.5 million days (boosted by walkouts that include huge public-sector strikes in Quebec in December).

Workers have seen their real purchasing power eroded by the outbreak of inflation as the COVID-19 pandemic has eased, and they are angry watching share prices and chief executive officers’ bonuses soar while their own standard of living has been squeezed. Low unemployment and higher job vacancies strengthened workers’ bargaining position – although that is changing in the wake of aggressive Bank of Canada interest-rate hikes.

Expect labour strife to continue for a while yet. Lest anyone complain that strike-happy workers are undermining Canadian productivity, keep in mind that work stoppages amount to just 0.05 per cent of all days worked in Canada. That’s one-tenth the proportion of days lost during the peak strike years in the bad old 1970s.

The post Workers Strike Back appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

Canada’s economy enters the New Year facing a wide range of challenges and uncertainties: high interest rates, stalling economic growth, and rising unemployment. To review the outlook, CBC Radio’s Sunday Magazine, hosted by Piya Chattopadhyay, recently broadcast a full 20-minute interview with Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford. The interview considered:

• The outlook for inflation and interest rates.
• Factors behind the gradual increase in unemployment.
• The growing contrast between the economic trajectory in Canada and the U.S. (which has enjoyed faster growth with equal inflation, but with much larger deficits). 
• The economic consequences of political instability in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The full recording of the CBC Sunday Magazine interview is available here.

The post Risks and Uncertainties Facing Canada’s Economy in 2024 appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

This commentary was originally published at rabble.ca.

As 2023 drew to a close, it wa3s instructive to review the path of gasoline prices (which are the most volatile major component in Canada’s consumer price index) over the year. According to the GasBuddy website, the average price on December 31 was $1.39/litre. That was 5₵ cheaper than at the beginning of 2023. But gas prices followed a long, winding road to get there.

Of course, the ups and downs of world oil futures markets are the major reason for this roller-coaster (even for gasoline extracted, refined & consumed here in Canada). What is striking is the irrelevance of Canadian fiscal and climate policies to the path of gas prices over the year.

The backstop federal carbon price (which applies in provinces not participating with their own carbon rice) rose $15/tonne on April 1. The new federal Clean Fuel Regulation came into effect July 1. Conservatives claimed both would send gasoline costs soaring. But their impact (small for the carbon price, non-existent for the fuel regulation) was swamped by global price turmoil.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and his team tried to exploit both policy moments to farm more rage against virtually anything to do with the federal government. On April 1, he warned about a wave of robberies at gas stations across the country, with the culprit stealing 14₵/litre from every customer.

Likening a policy measure adopted by an elected government and implemented in accordance with the rule of law, to the actions of a gas station stick-up bandit, seems irresponsible… but sadly it is par for the course these days for Canadian populism.

Then, on June 30, Mr. Poilievre urged Canadians to fill their tanks before the next “tax hike on gas” kicked in. (In reality, the Clean Fuel Regulation is not a tax, and no serious analyst expected it to have an impact on current gas prices.)

Ironically, gas prices in most parts of Canada fell slightly over the subsequent week. Anyone who took Mr. Poilievre’s financial advice literally, and actually believed they would save money by filling up on June 30, ended up losing a dollar or two. That’s not as much as the losses incurred by those who followed his previous advice to buy cryptocurrency. But it’s a reminder that politicians who muddle personal financial advice with ideological hot takes, are playing with fire.

Gas prices then fell through the autumn, thanks to lower world oil prices (OPEC+ efforts to cut supply didn’t succeed), seasonal factors, and gasoline supply trends. That’s been key to slowing inflation down to 3.1% by November – just as sky-high gas prices in summer 2022 were key to the 8% inflation experienced then.

Ironically, gas prices are now about 14₵/litre lower than on April 1. Will Mr. Poilievre now tweet his thanks to Mr. Trudeau for reimbursing 14₵/litre to all Canadians gassing up on the New Year’s holiday? That would be no more ridiculous than his claim Trudeau robbed them all on April 1.

More irony: even though gas prices are lower than a year ago (despite the higher carbon price), federal Climate Action Incentive Payment (CAIP) rebates (paid in 7 provinces without equivalent carbon prices) will grow in 2024, as the federal government reimburses higher proceeds from the carbon price. Details will be announced by the Finance Minister in the spring.

Provinces with their own carbon pricing systems will largely follow suit. Lower prices and higher rebates sounds like a win-win. Of course, when Mr. Poilievre promises to “axe the tax”, he is silent on what that means for CAIP rebates (currently worth up to $1544 for a family of 4).

Several lessons arise from this review of the gas price roller-coaster during 2023.

Lesson 1: People tend to blame politicians for hardship caused by private markets and businesses. (I’ve seen left-wing politicians do it, too, not just Conservatives.) It is convenient to use any problem as a point of attack in political debate. But we should be honest about what’s causing the hardship.

High gasoline prices in 2022 mostly resulted from the gyrations of speculative, financialized oil futures markets which overreact to any shocks. Canadian energy policy transmits that turmoil directly to consumers, amplified by unprecedented profit-taking by petroleum corporations (who have booked over $120 billion in net income since the start of 2022 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine).

This way of managing energy markets is not natural or inevitable, nor does it reflect ‘real’ economic forces like production costs, supply and demand, etc. To see how it could be done differently, compare gyrating gas prices to electricity costs in Quebec, Manitoba, & B.C., where a combination of public ownership and strict price regulation has kept electricity prices low – and boringly steady.

Lesson 2: Conservatives have focused on carbon pricing as their key hot button to exploit in preparing for the next election. But carbon pricing is virtually irrelevant to the genuine cost-of-living challenges facing Canadians. Our review of gas prices in 2023 is just one more piece of evidence supporting this assertion, but there is abundant evidence from many other sources.

However, that reality won’t stop populist Conservatives from blaming carbon pricing for any economic or social ailment. Unfortunately, Canadians need to prepare for a New Year filled with unprecedented misinformation. The need for evidence-based research, policy dialogue, and journalism has never been more urgent.

The post Review of Gas Price Roller-Coaster in 2023 Revealed Important Lessons appeared first on Centre for Future Work.