Ep.7: The Realities of COVID-19 on Provincial and Federal Budgets

Listen in with Janice MacKinnon. Janice is an academic historian who served for 12 years as a member of the Saskatchewan legislature. After Saskatchewan’s budgets spun out of control in the early 1990s, Janice helped steer Saskatchewan through its fiscal crisis and restored the province to fiscal stability.

In her 2003 book, Minding the Public Purse, Janice confessed that like most Canadians her eyes used to glaze over when she heard words like deficits, debt or public finances. Fortunately, she got over it and today is one of the country’s leading authorities as a person who has lived in the eye of a financial crisis — and as professor of fiscal policy at the University of Saskatchewan.

She has accepted invitations on several occasions to advise other governments on their economic and budgetary plans. In 2014, she headed a federal Economic Advisory Council to provide advice on fiscal, economic and financial issues to the Harper government. She completed a similar assignment for the Progressive Conservative Manitoba government in 2017. And last year, she led the Blue Ribbon Panel on Alberta’s Finances. Even more recently, she has advised Newfoundland and Labrador on its dire situation.

Janice joins Policy Speaking host Edward Greenspon for a discussion around the fiscal realities of COVID-19 on provincial and federal budgets.