ANALYSIS: Here’s what the federal budget might have missed

Armine Yalnizyan doesn’t necessarily follow the crowd when it comes to her economic analysis — she said as much at a recent CSA Policy Pathways conference in Toronto, focused on building a thriving Canadian economy. Yalnizyan discussed the first-ever budget from Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and her critique, she admits, is a bit “weird.”

But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Yalnizyan has been a frequent guest on TVO programs over the years and is probably the country’s most prominent progressive economist as the Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers. That puts her at odds with many of the country’s more establishment economists, not to mention the current prime minister and his finance minister.

She discussed global economic trends she’s been watching for decades. “The rise in protectionism didn’t happen overnight,” she said, “and it didn’t start with Donald Trump.” She said we entered an era of what she calls “me-first politics” more than a decade ago with […] This is an excerpt. See the full article on the TVO website.