Human ingenuity – often motivated by profit – is generally miles ahead of government regulations in resolving problems in society. Take, for example, the issue of orphan wells in Alberta. In September 2016, the Alberta Energy Regulator said there were 84,100 inactive...
“Blatherskite.” “Trained seal.” “Dim-witted saboteur”. “A piece of sh*t”. These are all terms which have been deemed to be “unparliamentary language” in Canada; use of them, and 102 other specified pieces of verbal abuse, may result in penalties levied by the Speaker...
Households could face even greater housing affordability challenges in the years to come, according to the September 2017 RBC Economics (RBC) Housing Trends and Affordability report. In noting that " The days of ultra low interest rates in Canada are over," RBC...
Taxpayer handouts to private corporations are always thorny. They inevitably mean that another business' tax dollars go straight to the pockets of their competition. This distortion also means that dollars better spent elsewhere by taxpayers, or even by governments,...
Introductory Comment Brian Giesbrecht, Retired Judge, Frontier Centre Senior Fellow: The Frontier Centre for Public Policy is honoured to present Mr. Manning’s latest offering, in what he calls a fictionalized story. It is about everything that has happened to this...
Many Canadians are aware of stories of how immigrants were originally attracted to Canada through the promise of free land. The then Minister responsible for immigration, Clifford Sifton, had his staff spread out across central and eastern Europe promising free land...
Canada is a nation of wide open spaces, yet it has high urban area densities recently driven higher by a redefinition of urban area criteria (Note 1). Canada’s largest urban area (population centre) is Toronto, with a population of 5.4 million continues to be the...
Attawapiskat First Nation — an isolated Northern Ontario reserve — played a prominent role in the Idle No More indigenous protest movement that erupted in 2012. Then Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence complained to the media about unacceptable housing conditions on her...
Hospitals in Canada consume about 30 per cent of health care spending, and are funded using a model known as block or global funding. This model results in a fixed or global amount of funding being distributed to the hospital. In return, the hospital is expected to...
Never let a good budget crisis go to waste. That must be why various labour groups have banded together to demand the end of private school funding. Facing a record-high deficit, Alberta’s NDP government is under considerable pressure to reduce costs without...
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy and The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) today jointly released The Size and Cost of the Public Sector in Western Canada, authored by Rodney A. Clifton, Jackson Doughart, and Marco Navarro-Génie. This study examines...
Recently I had lunch with a knowledgeable insider colleague who lamented over Manitoba’s lacklustre economic prospects. Brian Pallister's new provincial government had been dealt a terrible hand. The deficit likely exceeds a billion dollars on top of an unneeded and...
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy today released a study about the privatization of the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan (PCS). The report was co-authored by Dr. Mark Moore and Dr. Aidan Vining, both at the Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, BC....
Graham Lane Despite innumerable inquiries, claimed reforms and repeated apologies, Canada’s indigenous situation remains unsettled, tragic and almost incalculably expensive. Mired in misery, far too many aboriginal people and communities remain trapped in dire...
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy today released a study about treaty land entitlement and urban reserves in Saskatchewan. The study was conducted by Dr. Tom Flanagan, Professor Emeritus, University of Calgary, and Mr. Lee Harding, who was a M.A. student in the...