Year: 2012

New Regina Mayor

As the polls predicted, last night Michael Fougere was elected Regina's new mayor. Largely seen as the "status quo" candidate, and endorsed by the outgoing and long-serving mayor Pat Fiacco, Fougere had described the election as a referendum on the previous councils...

Alberta Legislature Gets to Work

The Alberta government’s legislative agenda for the new session of the Legislature was announced this week. What should we expect from it?

The government’s plan includes an education bill (reincarnate), a bill to amend electoral law and a bill to amend municipal electoral rules as well as one with guarantees for buyers of new homes.

But it may be the subthemes in and around some of the proposed bills that are likely to dominate the debate during. The Leader of the Official Opposition, Danielle Smith, has already served notice to the Redford government, for example, that her team will be looking closely into the questions of health, finance, and ethics. In that very context, they will be watching the pension issue as well as the commission of inquiry on healthcare wait times and queue-jumping.

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Cost of Revolution

Economically, Quebec has lagged behind the richest parts of Canada for many decades. Hence, its tax base is smaller but its welfare programs have been among the most generous in Canada since the 1960s. On its own, Quebec would never have been able to construct such a large welfare state. Thanks to federal transfers, Quebec has been able to live beyond its means for decades.

Frontier Centre Analysis on Higher Education Policy Issues

Protests in Quebec over planned tuition increases during the past academic year have sparked a considerable amount of debate over the current state of post-secondary education in Canada. Frontier Centre analysts have been active participants in this debate, and the Frontier Centre has become one of the country’s leading sources of public policy analysis on issues related to tuition fees and other issues surrounding higher education.

Bavaria Mulls an End to Solidarity

Residents of the country’s industrial and financial powerhouse states, particularly Bavaria, resent having to make payments to poorer regions like the city-state of Berlin, which tops the list of transfer recipients, with annual help from its neighbors of €3 billion ($4 billion).

Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem: Charles Murray examines the cloud now hanging over American business—and what today’s capitalists can do about it.

Mitt Romney’s résumé at Bain should be a slam dunk. He has been a successful capitalist, and capitalism is the best thing that has ever happened to the material condition of the human race. From the dawn of history until the 18th century, every society in the world was impoverished, with only the thinnest film of wealth on top. Then came capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. Everywhere that capitalism subsequently took hold, national wealth began to increase and poverty began to fall. Everywhere that capitalism didn’t take hold, people remained impoverished. Everywhere that capitalism has been rejected since then, poverty has increased.

The Man Who Saved Capitalism: Milton Friedman, who would have turned 100 on Tuesday, helped to make free markets popular again in the 20th century. His ideas are even more important today.

It’s a tragedy that Milton Friedman—born 100 years ago on July 31—did not live long enough to combat the big-government ideas that have formed the core of Obamanomics. It’s perhaps more tragic that our current president, who attended the University of Chicago where Friedman taught for decades, never fell under the influence of the world’s greatest champion of the free market. Imagine how much better things would have turned out, for Mr. Obama and the country.