Commentary The poor you will always have with you. (Matthew 26:11) Another thing that will always be with us: lenders making high-interest, short-term loans to the poor, who will then struggle to pay them back. This leads to yet another eternal condition: impractical moral judgments about such loans. In this year’s federal budget, the Liberals…

MPs in the House of Commons have passed the Liberal government’s Budget Implementation Act following a filibuster by the federal Conservatives that lasted several weeks. The NDP and Liberals voted against the opposing Tories and Bloc Quebecois to pass Bill C-47 through the House of Commons by a vote of 177-146, sending it to the…

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre gave a nearly four-hour speech in the House of Commons on Wednesday night to delay a vote on the Liberal government’s Bill C-47, or Budget Implementation Act, which the Tories have been vocal against for its deficit spending measures. Poilieve began his speech on June 7  just after 8 p.m. and…

The federal Conservatives resumed their filibuster of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s budget bill on May 25, with MPs seeking more testimony from relevant witnesses, according to Blacklock’s Reporter. “I don’t know why these Liberals want to make things so difficult for Canadians just to simply get the facts and understand the reality of the budget….

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says her government’s recently tabled budget will be remembered as a key moment in Canada’s transformation toward a “green” economy. “We should all be climate activists,” Freeland told the House of Commons finance committee on May 16. “When people look back on the budget that we are all ultimately going to…

Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) Yves Giroux says his office has some concerns about the nearly $800 million worth of new “non-announced” spending measures to be implemented over the next several years that were identified by the federal government in its most recent budget. Giroux told MPs on the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance on…

The Canadian government is planning to rewrite regulations governing the amount of interest that can be charged on a loan, and one of the country’s largest law firms, Bennett Jones, says it is monitoring the proposed changes and consultation process. Canada’s law on interest charges was last modified in 1978. Bennett Jones said the government…

Cabinet “underestimated” how many Canadians would sign up for the recently announced federal dental-care insurance plan, which is why the government said in the 2023 budget that the plan will probably cost $7 billion more than the original estimate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says. Speaking to reporters in Val-d’Or, Quebec, on April 3, Trudeau addressed added…

Commentary When Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland presented the federal budget, the most obvious fact was the size of the deficit. It came in at $40.1 billion, after having been forecast at “only” $30.6 billion in the fall economic update less than six months ago. What caused the deficit to shoot up $9.5 billion in such…

News Analysis OTTAWA—Flying under the radar of Budget 2023‘s spending and deficits are a couple of tax hikes on wealthy individuals and corporations that were telegraphed a year ago. But analysis shows that such tax hikes can impact people who are simply using well-established tax deductions, and a tax expert says they can also adversely…