All kinds of bad policy proposals are borne out of the mistaken belief that you can generate prosperity by destroying valuable and useful things so that people have to be employed creating replacements.
Ben Eisen
Fairness Demands Additional Commons Seats for Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta: All Canadians Deserve Fair Representation in Parliament
New legislation will give additional parliamentary representation to Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta to ensure that their representation in the House of Commons better reflects their populations.
Want to Cut Costs? Start With the Public Sector: More public servants and compensation costs driving federal wage bill growth
Canada needs an aggressive debt reduction strategy, and an important component of that strategy should be slowing down the growth of the government wage bill.
Cutting the Government Wage Bill
I’ve got a commentary in today’s National Post, in which I discuss yesterday’s budget, the need for governments in Canada to cut costs, and the growth of the government wage bill in recent years.
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Canadians on the Move, to Smaller Communities
The Canadian Dream is increasingly being realized in smaller areas For decades, Canadians moved to the larger cities (census metropolitan areas, or CMAs) with their economic opportunities. The latest estimates indicate that CMAs have 72 per cent of the nation’s...
Leadership Needed in Canadian Healthcare; Apply Within
When the Premiers were first called to a sit-down lunch to talk about healthcare with Prime Minister Trudeau, there was plenty of talk about the potential for systemic change, innovation and accountability. It seemed that Canadians and their leaders were finally on...
Evidence on the Negative Income Tax
Carol Goar's op-ed in The Toronto Star today discusses the negative income tax. The negative income tax is basically a policy proposal to create a guaranteed annual income for all households. The government would set a minimum threshold that it...
Paying Students to Study
In November, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) raised eyebrows when it suggested that its schools may begin paying some students for good performance. All of the details weren’t spelled out, but the basic idea is that schools would give students from low-income families a certain amount of money for staying enrolled in school and additional money for earning good grades.
This is a complicated issue and I’m not sure if the TDSB proposal is, on the whole, a good idea. However, one good thing about the proposal is that it shows that some people are beginning to consider rarely asked but crucially important questions at the heart of our education system’s problems – why are so many students refusing to study what can be done to get them to work harder?
Lower Minimum Wage for Students?
Interesting editorial in the National Post today, criticizing a new government program that will, essentially, pay businesses to hire summer students. The Post rightly criticizes this subsidy as a silly way to boost employment for students. The editorial makes a...
What’s Causing Big CEO Pay Increases?
I just finished reading a report published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) describing growth in the compensation for the highest paid CEOs in Canada in recent years. The author clearly think very high levels of CEO pay are a problem. He also hints that high rates of CEO pay are the result of unfair mutual back-scratching when he writes that everyone involved in decision-making on salaries is “in the club” and part of the same “community of interest” even if there is not a direct conflict of interest.
Others who are worried about executive compensation have made very similar points. Linda McQuaig, a Toronto Star/Calgary Beacon columnist (and, full disclosure, a personal friend) makes a similar point when she writes that CEOs have pushed up their own salaries through “their control of corporate boards.” The idea here is that since the board members are often corporate executives themselves, they benefit by giving another CEO a higher salary because this will raise the standard for executive pay, which will help them get a bigger raise when their turn to negotiate comes around.
RE: Taking on the Cult of Pessimism
David, Thanks for your column and for this follow-up. You're correct in describing an "instinctive and compulsive pessimism" that prevents a lot of people from acknowleding evidence that the world is becoming a better place to live. Currently, that pessimism is...
Taking on the Cult of Pessimism
Even when there is irrefutable evidence for it, some people have a, insurmountable mental block against optimism.
How Markets Help Minorities: The Example of Daycare
Recently, the government of Quebec announced a ban on religious instruction in publicly subsidized daycare centres. Couple quick thoughts:
1. The practical consequence of this decision is that it will be difficult for parents who value religious instruction as part of their toddler’s childcare experience to find arrangements that suit that preference.
2. Heavy-handed government intervention and regulation inevitably squeezes the vibrancy and diversity out of the childcare sector, resulting in an inflexible one-size-fits-all approach. Canada is a diverse, multicultural society and parents disagree about what constitutes a positive childcare experience. Although many parents doubtlessly prefer a secular experience for their toddler, there are others who view religious instruction as among the most important purposes of early childhood education.
Ontario Leads and Alberta Lags on Healthcare: But All Provinces Have Much to Learn from Europe
Ontario and British Columbia have the shortest wait times for care in Canada- but even the top Canadian provinces have much to learn from Europe’s superior healthcare models.
Canada Health Consumer Index 2010
The annual Canada Health Consumer Index evaluates healthcare-system performance in the ten provinces from the perspective of the consumer. For the third straight year, Ontario and British Columbia finish with the top scores in the CHCI’s overall rankings.