Paris – There are two climate conferences going on in Paris this month. One, the 21st Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP21) attended by about 40,000 people, and the other, The Paris Climate Challenge 2015, attended by about 40 people. The big...
Year: 2015
Towards a First Nations Governance Index
Honest, efficient government that respects property rights and the rule of law facilitates the achievement of prosperity and well-being in all jurisdictions, including First Nations. Therefore, it would be useful to have an index of governmental performance for First...
High time governments embraced the sharing economy
As cities across both Canada and the U.S. continue to stumble their way through issues surrounding the introduction of ride-sharing services such as Uber, it’s clear the ongoing reluctance by municipalities to allow these services is less about ride sharing...
Alberta budget had good news for home buyers
Rising house prices are a significant concern throughout Alberta, especially among first home buyers, many of whom are aspiring young families. There was, however, some good news out of the provincial budget that was announced at the end of October, as the Notley...
Featured News
There’s Nothing Fair About Canadian Health Care
For the past 14 years, Vancouver surgeon Dr. Brian Day has led the charge for health-care reform, pushing for the right of patients to pay for private care if their health and well-being are threatened as a result of waiting in a stagnant and overburdened public...
Transformers: More than Meets the Eye
The path to net zero, based on the much disputed belief that carbon dioxide is a pollution, is more steep and impractical than most people realize. Replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity will require much more power generation and a greatly upgraded grid to...
Compensation of First Nations Leaders
Due to passage of the First Nations Financial Transparency Act, systematic data about the compensation of chiefs and councillors are now available. Multiple regression analysis identifies three variables that explain part of the variation in pay: More populous First...
A Question of Values
House prices in Canada have risen more than in most other high-income nations. Housing has become severely unaffordable, especially in Vancouver and Toronto. Housing affordability has also deteriorated markedly in London, Sydney, Auckland, San Francisco, Los Angeles...
Trudeau II
In his concession speech on election night, Stephen Harper said, “While tonight’s result is certainly not the one we had hoped for, the people are never wrong.” This statement is clearly a cornerstone of a democracy. However, although the people are...
Surviving Sustainability: Towards Enduring Prosperity
The first formal definition of “sustainability” was given by the 1987 Brundtland Report or, properly, the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising...
Moving from Canada’s Biggest Cities
People have been moving away from Canada’s largest metropolitan areas (Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver) for the last decade, according to Statistics Canada 2004/5 to 2013/4 data. Internal migration includes moving by residents within provinces...
The campaign’s final make-or-break weeks
The endgame of this long election campaign is coming into view. Thomas Mulcair’s attempt to remake the New Democratic party as a moderate-centre party has failed, brought down by what Marxists call “internal contradictions.” His promise to balance...
The West Needs a Strategic Pause before Working with Russia
What a difference a year makes. Recall that not so long ago, Canada and other Western states were united in their condemnation of Russia’s Vladimir Putin after Russia not-so-secretly invaded Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, shot down a commercial airliner full of...
Canada’s Broken Compulsory Trades System
If a trade is compulsory, a person cannot legally work in the trade unless he or she carries a certificate of qualification or is registered in an apprenticeship program. If a trade is voluntary, a person can seek certification if desired, but he or she can also...
Local Government Performance Index
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy has completed the eighth edition of its Local Government Performance Index (LGPI). The Transparency Index (TI) ranks the top 100 Canadian cities on the quality of their financial reporting over the 2013 financial year. Since the...