Newfoundland's Finance Minister has suddenly resigned. He disagreed with the Premier's risky and increasingly expensive quest to have a Crown Corporation, Nalcor, build and transmit power from Muskrat Falls, Labrador, to export to the eastern seaboard states. Ontario...
Year: 2013
Counting cost of pot laws
Public policy is about trade-offs. There are few instances where a policy has no disadvantages, even if it is extremely beneficial on balance. A failure to recognize this makes us prey to simplistic and symbolic policy measures that seem sensible at first glance, but...
First Nations election bill step in right direction
The federal government has re-introduced Bill C-9, the First Nations Elections Act. The bill died on the order paper when the House of Commons prorogued this summer. The bill recognizes that well-run electoral systems are key to First Nations governance reform. Bil...
The flipped classroom has it all backwards
The one constant in the teaching profession is the regular introduction of new education fads. Whole language, open-area classrooms, and “new math” are a few examples from the past. Sadly, the lack of hard evidence for these and other fads did little to prevent them...
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No Evidence of Climate Crisis
In his annual State of the Climate report published on April 14, 2022, Dr. Ole Humlum, Emeritus Professor at the University of Oslo, examined detailed patterns in temperature changes in the atmosphere and oceans together with trends in climate impacts. Many of these...
It Is Time to Move On
I wrote an opinion column immediately following the May 27, 2021 announcement of the “shocking discovery of 215 bodies found in a mass grave at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.” In that column, I correctly stressed the need to wait for real...
“Home-schooled” is not synonymous with “socially awkward”
For a number of people, school is as much about socialization as it is about education. It is for this reason they don’t consider home-schooling a viable option. At times, home-schooling may be correlated with a person's discomfort in social settings, but in many...
How prorogation affects Aboriginal policy agenda
While the governing Conservatives have passes historic legislation that will advance First Nations communities, an upcoming parliamentary prorogation will kill a long awaited First Nations elections bill.
The Case for Opening Portage & Main
Portage & Main is one of Winnipeg’s most prominent intersections, but because it undermines local retail and residential development by dissuading pedestrians. Opening it up to pedestrians is a necessary condition for any successful neighbourhood revitalization scheme.
European governments continue to back away from renewable energy
Canadian policy makers should re-think green energy policies because new evidence points to the failure of renewable energy policies in Europe.
Government Lapdogs and Poodles continued
The former Dean of Engineering of the Province of Manitoba recently aptly classified the Clean Environment Commission as a lapdog of government, while the Public Utilities Board prepares to hold a government-restricted and ordered review of part of a Manitoba Hydro's...
Carbon Taxes a War On the Poor: A catastrophic waste of public money
The fixation with a carbon tax is already resulting in hardship on the poor, who must bear the cost of higher energy and food prices. The elderly or single mothers must now choose between heating and eating, at times.
The Fix for a Broken System of Higher Education
After the last couple of American elections, it’s become clear that the greatest challenge for conservatives is taking back the culture. And that’s a problem in Canada as well. One of the greatest obstacles to this lies in our universities, which have been taken over by their politically correct faculty members. The solution will come schools that combine new technologies with a classical curriculum.
Canadians need good information about water markets
A new column by the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) shows how politics is preventing water from reaching communities in southern California that desperately need it. In short, the column promotes water markets and pricing as superior to politics when...
We See Thee Rise: Canada’s Emerging Role In Policy Leadership
In their 2010 book The Canadian Century: Moving Out of America’s Shadow, Brian Lee Crowley, Jason Clemens, and Niels Veldhuis, three leading Canadian policy and think tank experts, described the great opportunity lying ahead for our northern neighbor. Public policy reforms that increased market incentives, opened new areas to trade and production, and moved toward increased economic freedom and financial stability, reversed the trends that made Canada lag behind the U.S. Canada today ranks ahead of the United States in economic freedom and in transparency, as well as in many other economic indicators such as lower levels of debt, less unemployment, and higher GDP growth.