Tausi Insider

Construction workers on the top floor of the Time and Space condominium project in Toronto on Oct. 11. Fred Lum/Tausi Insider Canada’s federal housing agency is lending billions of dollars to boost construction of rental homes without routinely disclosing the recipients of the money or where the units are being built, shrouding in secrecy a program designed to address the country’s housing shortfall by providing developers with low-cost financing. The Rental Construction Financing Initiative is one of Ottawa’s major efforts to boost home construction. It was announced in 2016 with $2.5-billion in funding, which has grown to more than $25-billion, making it the largest program in the government’s National Housing Strategy, a bundle of different initiatives intended to improve access to affordable units. RCFI is administered by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which as of this summer had committed to $13.6-billion in loans through the program. The developers receiving the m...

Women now account for a record-high share of Canada’s top income earners, but still have a long way to go to achieve parity with men both in terms of their share of top earners and the size of their paycheques. The latest high-income figures released by Statistics Canada this week show women made up 25.4 per cent of the top 1 per cent of income tax filers in 2020, a share that’s risen steadily over the past four decades. At the provincial level, women in Alberta made up the smallest share of top earners, at 21.4 per cent, while in Newfoundland women accounted for the highest share at 28.4 per cent. A 2019 study by Statistics Canada shed light on the working women who make up the top 1 per cent. They tend to be better educated than their male counterparts, are twice as likely to work in the health care sector – top one-percenter men are more likely to hold management jobs – and are less likely to be married or have children than high-earning men. While there are more women in the top ...

Alberta's oil-dominated economy is used to boom-and-bust cycles, but as global demand for oil is once again rising higher energy revenues are not translating into a sustained economic boom for the province. Craig Glover/cglover@craigglover.com Glen Hodgson is a senior fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute. Charles St-Arnaud is chief economist at Alberta Central. Alberta has earned a reputation over many decades for being a boom-bust economy. Strong oil demand and high prices have created boom times for jobs, incomes, investment and government revenues, while weak demand and falling prices have meant a slowdown or even recession on occasion. But now, global demand for oil is again rising and prices are high, yet more oil-production revenue is not translating into a sustained economic boom for Alberta. The province’s economy grew by 4.8 per cent in real terms (with inflation removed) in 2021. A budget surplus has financed or paid for Premier Danielle Smith’s latest inflation-relief han...