How do parents know if schools are good or bad? Parents tend to evaluate schools based on how well their kids master important academic skills such as reading and writing. How do taxpayers know if schools are good or bad? Taxpayers are more likely to think about how...
Year: 2013
Exercise Your Right To Know
Manitoba’s Ombudsman is celebrating national Right to Know week (September 23 to 28), asserting our individual and democratic right to access government-held information and promoting open, accessible and transparent government. The Ombudsman notes that access to...
Public Private Partnerships – A Primer For Regina Voters
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy has today released a new report on Public Private Partnerships [P3s] in anticipation of the City of Regina’s referendum this week. Entitled Public Private Partnerships: A Primer For Regina Voters, it is designed to provide an...
Public Private Partnerships
Introduction On 25th of September, the citizens of Regina will vote in a referendum for the first time in 20 years. The question? Whether the city should use a traditional contract to construct a new wastewater treatment plant or to proceed with the council’s...
Featured News
What Exactly Does ‘Climate Justice’ Mean?
It seems like everything is about justice these days. Recently, as I drove home from the store, I saw a sign for the elections here in New York from the local Democratic Party, promising “equity, equality, and justice for all.” Beyond the obvious concerns any sane...
We are Finding the 2800 Missing Children
The “secret graves” and “missing children” narrative had our national flag flying at half-mast for over five months after an obscure indigenous politician made the startling claim that she “knew” that 215 indigenous children had been secretly buried in the “apple...
Slow the Flow… Save the Lake: Throwing money at Lake Winnipeg won’t help much, but some ditch-digging might
On Thursday, the province announced a new “Lake Friendly Accord” intended to leverage $1 billion worth of investment into ways to improve the ecological state of the vast Lake Winnipeg watershed, which stretches from the Rocky Mountains in the west down to the edge of South Dakota and then east into Canadian Shield between Atikokan and Thunder Bay.
Densification: Examining the Pros and Cons of Denser Cities
Cities are amazing places, bringing together all sorts of different people. Different ideas and customs often mix and multiply, providing new and exciting opportunities for work and play. And this intellectual and cultural fermentation does require a certain density of population. But is denser always better?
Study highlights need to unify public and private in conservation
A study released by Reed Watson, a research fellow with the Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center, correctly identifies the problem of conservation. The full study can be accessed here. That problem being the so-called split wildlife estate where...
Manitoba’s PST increase is for?
“Bad news all at once; good news over time.” That was the advice Niccolo Machivalli had for the eponymous Prince in his most famous work. This maxim has clearly not been lost on Manitoba's provincial government. Their recent decision to circumvent the requirement for...
Sadly, Gradeless Marking Eliminates the Winning
Our public education system’s drive to rewire human nature and eliminate competition in and between schools continues. Already, we have those everybody’s-a-winner sports days. And there’s been a huge push by the B.C. teachers’ union to scrap standardized tests for Grade 4 and 7 kids.
Aboriginal Day means time for new ideas
As Aboriginal Day comes tomorrow, is time to re-think our current policy approaches and think about a new direction.
Bjorn Lomborg On Obama’s Berlin Speech
Bjorn Lomborg reminds us, via his Facebook page, about the giant difference between Obama's rhetoric and record on yet another issue. Obama said in his recent speech in Berlin: "In the United States, we have recently doubled our renewable energy from clean sources...
Fix AFN before Trying to Create Alternative Body
Rather than focus on creating another First Nations political organization, native communities need to resolve existing issues within the Assembly of First Nations.
Media Release – The Pipeline Gap
A lack of pipeline capacity in North America is costing the Canadian economy billions of dollars each year. In order to draw attention to the significant loss of economic opportunity in the prairies, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy is launching a digital counter on its website to add up the lost dollars.