Rent control reduces the incentive for construction of rental housing, and causes landlords to underinvest in maintenance since they aren’t able to recover their costs otherwise. To mitigate this, Manitoba’s rent controls exempt units priced under $1400 from controls, and grants a 20 years exemption from controls for new units. While less damaging than full blown rent control, this compromise still has a number of negative unintended consequences.
Year: 2012
Aboriginal women leading in ways beyond Idle No More
Four aboriginal and non-aboriginal female lawyers inspired the movement that led to the Idle No More protest movement enveloping Canada right now. Women have certainly been leading in First Nations affairs recently. Case in point is the high number of women in the...
Canada’s Health Care System Rewards Mediocrity
There are defenders of the status quo who view any suggestions for reform with suspicion, but every aspect of our modern society is subjected to continuous review, change and improvement. The same process should be applied to hospital funding in Canada. If we are to improve we must change what we are doing.
Man The Lifeboats! Global Warming Has Oceans Rising At Alarming Rate! (Or Maybe not)
Whew! We made it through that Mayan end of the world apocalypse thing. But don’t even begin to imagine that our doomsday problems are nearly over.
Featured News
Alberta Politics and Empty Promises of Health-care Solutions
The writ has been dropped and Albertans are off to the polls on May 29. That leaves just four weeks for political leaders and voters to sort out what is arguably the most divisive, yet significant, issue for this election - health care. On Day 2, NDP leader Rachel...
There’s Nothing Fair About Canadian Health Care
For the past 14 years, Vancouver surgeon Dr. Brian Day has led the charge for health-care reform, pushing for the right of patients to pay for private care if their health and well-being are threatened as a result of waiting in a stagnant and overburdened public...
Transformers: More than Meets the Eye
The path to net zero, based on the much disputed belief that carbon dioxide is a pollution, is more steep and impractical than most people realize. Replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity will require much more power generation and a greatly upgraded grid to...
Man The Lifeboats! Global Warming Has Oceans Rising At Alarming Rate! (Or Maybe not)
Whew! We made it through that Mayan end of the world apocalypse thing. But don’t even begin to imagine that our doomsday problems are nearly over.
This Christmas, we have more to be thankful for than ever
The world is safer than it has ever been, and despite current economic turmoil, global poverty is in retreat. There are certainly policy improvements that could ameliorate socio-economic conditions in the western world, and there is a lot left to be done to tackle global poverty, but we are on the right trajectory.
Back From the Brink of Extinction: Woods bison, muskeg swamps and Canadian oil sands prove energy and wildlife coexist
The last woods bison in the United States was apparently shot by a hunter in West Virginia around 1835. For many decades, the woods bison was presumed extinct – until an airplane spotted an isolated herd in the muskeg swamps north of Alberta, Canada. I was delighted to actually see another herd of the nearly extinct animals calmly munching on hay – right in the middle of the oil sands mining project in northern Alberta, which I visited a few weeks ago. Much of this oil is destined for the USA, to reduce imports from dictatorships, and more will come in the Keystone XL Pipeline, if President Obama ever approves it.
Calgarians Deserve Details on Swollen Project Prices
Whatever the process for tallying up a $1.4-billion bill, the West LRT still ranks as an insanely costly project, at $190 million per kilometre of track, or $42,000 and change per estimated daily rider according to a review done by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
Losing Sight Of The Issues: Birds, bowling, and bags: when city councils take on needless battles
Councillors have also spent time debating and voting on matters they have no power to actually address, whether it be banning shark-fin soup, opposing the Iraq War, or ending the NHL lockout — just this week, a Vancouver city councillor put forward a motion to write a letter to the NHL and the players’ association urging them to end the standoff (it passed).
First Nations court in Kamloops deserves exploration and caution
In 2013, Kamloops will become one of the few B.C. settings with a dedicated First Nations court. The court will feature elders and be modelled after restorative justice. The Kamloops court is modelled after a New Westminster First Nations courtroom, which has been in...
City politicians focus on utopian visions while citizens just want simple things, like passable roads
It’s the new urban blight. Across the country, city governments are in varying states of disarray, if not chaos. The range is wide, from the badly governed fiasco in Toronto to outright corruption in Montreal and boondoggle-prone governments in Vancouver, Calgary and other Western cities. Taxes are rising, spending is soaring, but roads are crumbling and the basics often ignored.
The Doha Wealth Redistribution Process Moves On: Climate alarmists didn’t get all they wanted – but they put us on a very slippery slope
The eighteenth Conference of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP-18) has ended. It was the latest chapter in the interminable negotiations over wealth redistribution and control of energy use and economic growth – in the name of preventing “dangerous manmade global warming.” Next year in Warsaw!