As a regular attendee of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, I have had the good fortune to watch and hear a wide variety of interesting musicians over the years. One such performance was that of an Indigenous rap singer. His main theme in a number of his songs was treaty...
Autonomy for individuals and families was built into traditional Indigenous governance structures, and explicitly built into the historical treaties through an annuity payable directly to every man, woman and child in bands signing the treaties. However, since the...
Recently, a long-dead and largely unlamented tax has been rediscovered, with some new-ish fans who never really repudiated their great love for it. It is the Death Tax, or Estate Tax, which was abolished in Canada in 1971 by a Liberal government when a capital gains...
Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was interviewed on CBC Radio on May 31, 2018. Although he is now 84 years old, he sounds today just like the feisty, former street fighter he was. From a very young backbencher, through many cabinet posts, and finally to a Prime...
If one was to discuss the state of the world’s democracies in September of 2019, it would look entirely different than it does today in 2022. Three years ago, Canadians generally thought that: our democracy was relatively strong and citizens would defend their...
One of the greatest books that explain how the world works is Propaganda by Edward Bernays. The man dubbed “the father of public relations” applied the psychological ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud upon the masses, triggering their basic motivations to the benefit of...
The budget crisis in Alberta has led some to suggest cutting funding to private schools. This is a short-sighted and unfair idea. Private schools are only partly financed by the province which does not cover capital costs and provides a per-student grant less than...
There is scientific evidence that our planet’s climate is cyclical and has been changing since the dawn of time, so the idea of “climate change” (formerly known as global warming) is fallacious in itself, since it implies that the normal state of things is a stable...
Night hunting is an incredibly dangerous practice involving high-powered rifles capable of killing over a distance measured in miles. People have been killed as a result of this reckless activity, and livestock have been slaughtered. It is also responsible for an...
One of the most contentious policy debates in recent years is the minimum wage. Opponents of raising the minimum wage say it will result in job losses, because making it more expensive to hire workers means businesses will hire fewer workers. But some supporters of...
This short video covers the key points of Chapter Two "The Broken Window" from Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson." The Broken Window Fallacy is a classic story first told by Frederic Bastiat, showing the danger of only seeing one side of an economic activity....
In an effort to slay what appears to be a structural deficit, the Manitoba’s government is legislating a pause in annual inflation- level pay increases in its share of the overall public sector. That is, if the legislation is okay with the courts. Last July, the...
The “60s’ Scoop” is back in the news again. The federal government has set aside $875 million for Indigenous adults who were adopted into non-Indigenous homes in the 1960s, 70s and early 80s. Those who accept the money don’t have to prove they suffered any harm. They...
Politicians almost universally believe that timely, appropriate and voluntary action to remedy structural economic imbalance should be avoided at all costs because it amounts to political suicide. Consequently, as studies by the Organization for Economic Cooperation...
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy has just released a new research paper, Indigenous Entrepreneurship In Canada. This research paper is authored by Joseph Quesnel, a research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. This paper shares the stories of 6...