The Canada-Europe Free Trade Agreement is a major milestone for the country. The potential impact will be hugely positive, especially for prairie agriculture. Among the greatest beneficiaries would be cattle ranchers in several provinces. Increased duty-free access to...
Year: 2013
Fine for packing “unbalanced” daycare lunch demonstrates shortcomings of Canada’s Food Guide
A Manitoba mother received a $10 fine from a daycare centre for sending her kids with a meal that was deemed nutritionally unbalanced. The story caught the attention of international audiences, since the meal was, by most accounts, nutritionally balanced. The Ritz...
Futulity of Giving Advice
Recently, the Minister Responsible for Manitoba Hydro, former Finance Minister Stan Struthers, issued an invitation to Manitobans to provide their views regarding Manitoba Hydro's Power Smart programs. Briefly, Publius considered responding to the invitation, before...
Making Floods Affordable
The 2013 southern Alberta floods were needlessly costly and destructive. The overwhelming costs arise not as a result of an ill-executed response and recovery, but because of a failure to prepare for the possibility of severe flooding by the provincial and municipal...
Featured News
Canada in 2073—Will There Be One?
“Ahead, Thar Be Dragons.” The world of 2023 is a scary place. One major war is raging, with others probably on the way. The Pax Americana that has given us freedom of the seas and allowed global trade to flourish might be breaking down. International piracy,...
World Cries out for Canadian LNG, “No Business Case” Feds have Totally Failed Us
Today, Canada’s natural gas sector is seeing its decade of darkness due to federal policy. And it’s not because the opportunity wasn’t there. It was because our government allowed its ideology, and that of its anti-oil and gas friends (also known as protestors) to...
Oil is Good, and Pipelines are Even Better
Opponents of oil pipelines, such as the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast, have arguably caused unnecessary harm to the environment, reduced public safety, and slowed the Canadian economy. They have done this by causing oil to be shipped through...
Where have all the public thinkers gone? Away from universities
Omer Aziz, Globe and Mail, October 21, 2013 The publication of Michael Ignatieff’s memoir has ignited a debate about the political careers of the intellectual-turned-politician. It is not the fact that Mr. Ignatieff was an outsider that makes his loss so...
United Nations Lets Down People On Reserves
Colin Craig, Canadian Taxpayers Federation A man who lives on an aboriginal reserve in Quebec once described how he went out for milk one day, came home and saw a death threat scrawled on his driveway. What did he do to provoke such a hostile act? He told the Canadian...
Florida Sheds Its ‘Smart Growth’ Dunce Hat
Wendell Cox, Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2013 From the mid-20th century on, sunny, prosperous Florida epitomized the growing American state. Its decline and fall in 2007 and its current resurgence owe a lot to how the state embraced, and later broke up with,...
Education Course Professors Provide Bad Instruction
Anyone in Canada who wants to be a teacher must obtain a teaching certificate. Nowadays most teachers must complete a Bachelor of Education degree from an accredited university or teachers college. Increasingly, those schools that train teachers are getting poor marks...
Hydro Has Conflict With Gas
Two energy sources dominate Manitoba's winter heating environment: hydro-generated electricity and natural gas. One, through the electricity grid, has been extended, assisted by significant government and ratepayer subsidies, to cover over 98 per cent of households....
Life in a climate cataclysm box
Dennis M. Mitchell and David R. Legates As children playing on the beach, we discovered a fascinating behavioral pattern among hermit crabs. Place a dozen in a cardboard box, and within minutes the crabs exit their shells and try to occupy another. This mild...
Will we get pick-and-pay cable? The federal Conservative pro-consumer initiative
Where are the federal Conservatives headed on policy? Over the past year there have been some odd priorities, at least to my mind. My favourite odd ducks are: 1 - Making a new training program a key plank of the last budget, pushing into provincial...
Expression Not So Free at University
How do Manitoba universities fare when it comes to protecting freedom of expression? According to the 2013 Campus Freedom Index, Manitoba universities are not doing so fantastic. In Manitoba, 67% of campuses earned at least one 'F' in the index's four categories....