Insights

It’s tax time, and financial advisers are out in full force, pitching their latest and greatest services to lower your tax bill.And mentions of the First Home Savings Accounts are everywhere — billboards, Instagram feeds, even in your bank apps.

More than a quarter of Canada’s working age population has a disability of some kind and poverty among people with disabilities is pervasive—despite multiple layers of government programs and supports.

Our new research shows that one of Canada’s most popular tax incentives for home ownership is turning into a program that benefits those who need it least. And it risks undermining the very policy goals it was meant to solve.

So much about what has made our economy work in the past has been turned on its head over the past year — our supply chains, our access to the U.S. market, our flow of foreign labour, the predictability of our financial markets, and the financing of universities that produce our intellectual capital.

Since the pandemic ended, life for the wealthy has been a joyride. Life for the rest of us has, more often than not, been a grind.

Six years ago today (March 21, 2026), the federal government closed the border to non-essential travel with the United States to curb the spread of COVID-19. They had already shut down large sections of the economy, and started issuing hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to help companies and workers deal with the pandemic.

It’s tax-filing season again, with all the headaches that brings for Canadians tearing apart their houses and their laptops to find the right paperwork before the deadline.

The Canadian Club of Toronto hosted a panel on rethinking Canada’s tax system (what works, what doesn’t, what’s next), featuring the Canadian Tax Observatory’s Heather Scoffield, Deloitte’s Fatima Laher and the University of Calgary’s Jack Mintz. Moderated by Patrick Brethour of the Globe and Mail. Here’s a recording.

What happens to Canada’s approach to monetary policy when the world’s most powerful central bank, the U.S. Federal Reserve, is in turbulent times? Heather Scoffield breaks it down here for The Rundown on TVO.

The House of Commons has agreed to fast-track legislation to boost the GST credit for 12 million taxpayers with low and modest incomes. Here’s Heather Scoffield’s initial analysis of the measure.

From a distance, it looks like a dirty trick. The United States leads the world into a negotiation for a global minimum tax. Eventually, painfully, everyone agrees to a complicated, finely-balanced pact that would ensure big multinational corporations all pay at least 15 per cent in taxes.

Canadian parliamentarians are taking a crack at squeezing out more government revenue from tax havens, and we wish them all the luck and stamina. Tucked away from the Conservative-to-Liberal floor-crossings and the nail-biting confidence-vote drama that have dominated this Parliament, MPs on the House of Commons finance committee were contemplating all the places where corporations put their profits.

We seem to have lost the plot when it comes to the link between the taxes we pay and the services we get. But not these three UBC students! In a contest to tackle a challenging public transit funding problem, they found themselves advocating for a bespoke (very small) tax hike.

PM Mark Carney says he wants to issue pre-filled tax forms for those in “simple” tax situations. But “simple” is in the eye of the beholder. In financial terms, “simple” can mean you probably don’t have intricate investments. You likely don’t owe the government money. Nor do you draw your income from multiple sources.

In this episode of the “It’s Political” podcast, host Althia Raj talks to the Canadian Tax Observatory for an overview and analysis of the federal budget, before diving into the politics of it all.

A budget’s long-term success depends on bringing the public along, and building trust with the very households, corporations and organizations the government needs to implement its budget decisions. That is especially true of this one.

Mark Carney promised us the world in the lead-up to his first budget as prime minister – a generational, Canada-first plan that would set us all up for a prosperous future.

By this time next week, the World Series will be behind us and pundits across the land will be liberated from using tortured and gratuitous baseball metaphors to explain and enlighten every element of their thinking.

Those of us who make a habit of sifting through government speeches and documents in search of clues for the upcoming federal budget can safely assume: this year, it’s all about investment.

The federal government rolled out a new approach to budgeting this week, and the subtext is obvious: bricks and mortar are the foundation of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s fiscal policy design.

When Democrat Pete Buttigieg was in Ottawa for the Canada 2020 dinner this week, he had some strategic advice for those who despair over the state of America and are having a hard time seeing their way to the other side of that “storm.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney chose his words well to describe this shocking moment in Canada’s economy. “Rupture” is an apt way to describe what’s overwhelming us, with tariffs undercutting our exports, weak growth taking a toll on the job market and uncertainty undermining long-term investment.