Low Interest Rates and the Cost of Government Debt and Canada’s Budget and Deficit Cuts in the Late 20th Century: An Amazing Success Story are the latest installments in an essay series on government deficits that emphasize the risks of higher interest costs on government debt, and note the similarities between today’s federal fiscal situation and the mid-1990s when interest costs consumed one of every three dollars of government revenue. At that time, the government enacted major reforms—including spending reductions—to help dramatically reduce the federal debt.

Catching Up and Falling Behind: The Five Economic Eras of Atlantic Canada, 1961–2019 is a new study that tracks the economic performance of the region through the years compared to the rest of Canada. It finds that incomes (measured in per person GDP) in the Maritime provinces, which had been catching up to incomes in the rest of the country, began to fall again in 2010, dropping from $7,907 lower than the rest of Canada (excluding Alberta) in 2010 to $11,034 lower in 2019.

Understanding the Changing Ratio of Working-Age Canadians to Seniors and Its Consequences is a new study that finds as Canada’s population ages, the number of working-aged Canadians relative to the number of seniors has declined from 5.4 in 2000 to 3.4 in 2022, which means government spending related to seniors is increasing at the same time that the growth in tax revenues is declining.