Saskatchewan's Perry Bellegarde faces many challenges as the new National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. The organization is in crisis after Shawn Atleo resigned from the post before the end of his term. A number of chiefs felt he acted too independently and...
Year: 2014
The Battle Against Bad Teaching
Nothing is more important than giving our children a good education, but getting rid of bad teachers can be very difficult. A recent court case in California may change that in the United States. A judge in Los Angeles has declared as unconstitutional, the sections of...
The Auditor General Did Not Say that P3s Cost Taxpayers $8 Billion
The Auditor General of Ontario’s report is a technical document that few people actually read. Bullet points from executive summaries of such reports are often used as the basis for newspaper columns and political talking points in the grown up equivalent of the game...
New National Chief can Transform Indigenous Politics
The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) has selected a new national chief. Perry Bellegarde, recently chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations and former chief of the Little Black Bear First Nation in Saskatchewan, will have three-and-a-half years to...
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Canadian Property Rights Index 2023
A Snapshot of Property Rights Protection in Canada After 10 years
Alberta Politics and Empty Promises of Health-care Solutions
The writ has been dropped and Albertans are off to the polls on May 29. That leaves just four weeks for political leaders and voters to sort out what is arguably the most divisive, yet significant, issue for this election - health care. On Day 2, NDP leader Rachel...
Emission Targets Are Unrealistic
Political leaders around the world have now spent more than two decades setting targets for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide that no one has any realistic hope of achieving. In the United Kingdom, emissions are being reduced at a rate of 1 percent per year. To...
Teacher Tenure Rules Can Harm Children
An important and historical court case recently concluded in California that has implications for Canadian public schools. In Vergara v. California [2014], the Superior Court for Los Angeles ruled that some of the state’s teacher tenure, dismissal, and layoff laws are...
Urbanization and the Good News About World Poverty
Originally printed in the Huffington Post. The history of humanity is a history of poverty. This is illustrated in the work of University of California, Davis economist Gregory Clark. According to Clark (Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World):...
Knowledge is More Important Than Ever in Schools
Imagine that you are a fly on the wall in a faculty of education classroom or in a teachers’ professional development session. What would you hear? Chances are that you would hear about the need for teachers to establish a student-centred classroom environment in...
Quebec And Ontario Squeezing Smaller Provinces Out Of Equalization
Manitoba and the three Maritime provinces who rely on equalization payments as a source of revenue are getting a lot less than they used to. Equalization payments as a share of GDP have been declining significantly in all four provinces since 2009. In Manitoba, this...
The Future of Public Transportation Has Arrived – and It’s in Cleveland
Support for public transportation has grown significantly over the past decade in North America. Major transit expansions were key issues in the recent Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg elections, and ambitious plans were green lighted by voters in each of those...
Valuation Analysis of SaskEnergy
This analysis arrives at approximations of the value of SaskEnergy, a provincial Crown corporation owned by the government and thus the citizens and taxpayers, of the province of Saskatchewan. These valuation ranges could be useful in determining the future ownership...
Frontier Centre for Public Policy Estimates SaskEnergy at $1.2 Billion
Today the Frontier Centre for Public Policy released an independent valuation of SaskEnergy, Saskatchewan’s provincial Crown natural gas distributor. The report authored by financial analyst Ian Madsen estimated the potential market value at an average of $1.164...
Investing in First Nation Water Systems Must Continue
Residents of Canada's First Nations should begin to see noticeable improvements in the quality of their drinking water sooner rather than later. While the condition of water and sewage treatment systems on many reserves is a serious concern, significant resources have...