Canada’s public sector is entering into a crisis state with its labour relations processes. For far too long, Canadians have watched their governments enter into bad agreements at a high price to taxpayers, and now that various levels of government can no longer...
Year: 2013
Sea Levels Challenge Global Warming Orthodoxy
We just posted an interesting commentary about sea levels and global warming by an American meteorologist with an interest in ancient city sites in Europe and Asia. Robert Endlich observes that declining global temperatures caused the polar ice cap to...
Property Rights Video Clip
One of the projects I'm working on at Frontier is a new video clip about a company called GSI - Geophysical Service Incorporated. Joseph Quesnel, one of my colleagues, has written about GSI before. GSI conducts seismic surveys and then sells the data they collect...
Govt should curb its love of regulation
Editorial, New Zealand Herald, December 2, 2013 In themselves, the Government's proposed amendments to the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act contain a reasonable degree of common sense. What can be wrong with changes that aim to reduce the risk of children drowning? And...
Featured News
Our Health Ministers Need to Take a Lesson from Hockey Coaches
Those of you who are tired of my rants about the demise of our once great health system will be pleased to know that this is my last editorial. I am retiring from the BCMJ Editorial Board; currently, I am the longest-serving member (more than 20 years). I have been a...
Zinchuk: Oilpatch Only Spending Half What It Spent in 2014
Back in the lofty, pre-Justin Trudeau government days of 2014, back when oil was booming, pipelines were planned to east and west coasts, and Alberta and Saskatchewan were swimming in money, around $81 billion was spent in capital expenditures (CAPEX) in the Canadian...
B.C. First Nation leads historic and controversial move toward aboriginal private home ownership
Source: Tristin Hopper, The National Post, 8 Nov 2013 This month, in a remote corner of northern B.C., just a few kilometres from the Alaskan border, three modest houses entered Canadian First Nations history. The residences, all located on the self-governed lands of...
The Biggest News From The Winnipeg Police Service Review Is What Was Excluded
The Winnipeg Police Service operational review is making a lot of noise, but the biggest news is what’s not in the report. While the report did get into issues such as the WPS not taking full advantage of its CrimeStat software for tracking and predicting where crime...
Lessons from Lac-Megantic
Executive Summary Since 2008, the United States has been developing important policy relating to risk in the transportation of dangerous goods by rail. The dialogue has not been restricted to the conventional corporate participants—the chemical producers and...
Lessons from the Lac-Megantic accident
Since 2008, important policy debate has been developing in the United States on risk in the transportation of dangerous goods. The Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway (MMA) bankruptcy protection following the Lac-Mégantic disaster last summer provides an opportune...
A chance for change at MPI
With Manitoba Public Insurance's Marilyn McLaren having announced her intention to retire, the search for a new president will begin. Before determining the qualifications required, advertising the position and selecting the monopoly auto insurer's new leader, the NDP...
AMC should support First Nations election bill
The federal government has reintroduced its First Nations Elections Act, now known as Bill C-9. Previously known as Bill S-6, that bill died on the order paper when Parliament recently prorogued. Let’s hope Derek Nepinak, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs...
Class Size is not the No. 1 issue in education on the Prairies
New school trustees were elected in Alberta recently, and several of them have identified class size as a major public concern. But they and their colleagues in Manitoba and Saskatchewan should be looking at the larger picture. If school boards would focus on how to...
66 million dollars spent on talking, none spent on aboriginal youth in B.C.
Yesterday B.C.’s children’s watchdog, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, released a damning report of the provinces Ministry of Children and Family Development in spending close to $66 million over the last dozen years on “big, blue sky initiatives” for aboriginal youth. Yet...
Nisga’a begin private property experiment
The Nisga'a are a self-governing First Nation located in northwestern British Columbia. In 2008, the Nisga'a embarked on a revolutionary experiment in property ownership. They passed the Landholding Transiton Act, a piece of legislation that would allow individuals to...