Understanding Universal Health Care Reform Options: Activity-Based Funding is a new study that finds paying hospitals for each patient they treat, also known as activity-based funding, instead of allocating pre-defined annual budgets could improve the quantity and quality of health care services while reducing wait times for Canadians. Nearly every other developed country with a universal health-care system has moved towards activity-based funding in recent decades, whereas Canada is among the last to continue to use lump sum payments.

Caution Required When Comparing Canada’s Debt to that of Other Countries is a new study that finds Canada’s relative debt position is much worse than the federal government suggests when compared to a larger group of advanced countries. In fact, while Canada does have the lowest net debt to GDP in the G7, Canada’s position falls to 11th when the analysis is expanded to include 29 advanced countries, including many European countries and Australia. What’s more, when gross debt—and not net debt—are measured, Canada is the 25th most indebted country out of the 29 included in the study.

This year, Tax Freedom Day is Monday, May 24. If you had to pay all your federal, provincial and municipal taxes up front, you would give government every dollar you earned from January 1st to Tax Freedom Day, when Canadians finally start working for themselves. In 2021, the average Canadian family (with two or more people) will pay 39.1 per cent of its annual income in taxes, including income taxes, payroll taxes, health taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, fuel taxes, carbon taxes and more.