Year: 2008

Province Rethinking Nitrogen Removal

The Doer government wants to take a second look at whether removing nitrogen from Winnipeg’s waste water is worth the huge cost. The move is an about-face for the province, which has steadfastly maintained nitrogen should be removed from waste water along with phosphorus and ammonia. The review comes as many in the scientific community say nitrogen removal is costly and will have little impact on reducing pollution in Lake Winnipeg, where Winnipeg’s waste-water pollution eventually ends up via the Red River.

Medicare Takes A Back Seat

Canadians need to stop kidding themselves that they live in a country with one-tier medicare, where taxpayers foot the bill for each other and everyone gets looked after eventually, Walberg adds. The reality is more “murky, very murky” and has given rise in the last five years to a number of private clinics that bill provincial insurance plans for “medically necessary” care and bill patients for extras.

Featured News

The Pawlowski Decision

In the Alberta Health Services v. Artur Pawlowski and Dawid Pawlowski decision last September, a Court of Queen’s Bench justice found the two brothers in contempt of court. The Pawlowski brothers openly challenged health ordinances and court orders and did not deny...

Governance Index A Positive Move For First Nations

Several years ago, as First Nations moved toward self-government, the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy developed the idea of polling residents on reserves to obtain a more accurate picture regarding the way in which each community was governed: its elections, administration, human rights, transparency, services and economy.

War And Taxes

Death and taxes — more specifically, war and taxes — are often linked. The first recorded tax began six thousand years ago on a fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (now part of modern Iraq). Inscriptions on clay stones excavated at Lagash revealed not only the existence of a tax but why: to pay for a ferocious war.

A New Approach to Alberta’s Minimum Wage

Author David Pankratz summarizes his findings as follows: “Our comparison makes it abundantly clear that we can best express the sincerity of our intentions to help the poor by expanding the value of their basic exemption from income taxes . . .

In fact, the numbers show that increased exemptions work spectacularly better than minimum wages or tax credits in meeting the goal of improved incomes.”

Questionable Graduate Programs For Teachers And Administrators

Recent reports written by Arthur Levine, the former president of Teachers College Columbia University in New York City, called into question the quality of most graduate programs for school teachers and administrators in the United States. While the situation does not appear to be as bleak in Manitoba, there are signs that the University of Manitoba is making some of the same mistakes outlined in the Levine report.