New RLP columnist’s very unfortunate choice of analogy…
David Seymour
David Seymour directed the Frontier Centre’s Saskatchewan office from 2007 to 2011. He holds degrees in Electrical Engineering and Philosophy from the University of Auckland, where he also tutored Economics. After working as an engineer in New Zealand, he applied his passion for sound policy analysis to policy issues on the Prairies. In four years working for the Frontier Centre, David carried out extensive media work, presenting policy analysis through local and national television, newspapers, and radio. His policy columns were published in newspapers in every province as well as the Globe and Mail and the National Post. David produced policy research papers on telecommunications privatization, education, environmental policy, fiscal policy, poverty, and taxi deregulation. However, his major project with the Frontier Centre was the annual Local Government Performance Index (LGPI) which compiled financial performance statistics across all major Canadian cities. David also produced an 18 part video series based on Henry Hazlitt’s classic book Economics in One Lesson and wrote the book “Birth of a Boom – Saskatchewan’s Dawning Golden Age” in 2011.
Research by David Seymour
Compulsory Unions Violate Student Freedoms
Guest post by intern Dan Osborne.
When Rector Nick Day, “elected to represent the approximately 20,000 students of Queen’s University”, signed an inflammatory open letter to Michael Ignatieff, he unintentionally showed the need for voluntary student unionism and the abolition of closed shop in Canada. When students are forced into joining their student union, student government, etc, they are forced into association with the group and its other members, no matter what the group does or how offensive it is to the student. In the case of Rector Day, the students of Queen’s University have been forced into association with the man and his comments regardless of whether they like it or not.
Day’s letter is basically a stock-in-trade angry young man’s diatribe about Israel. It argues that despite any opinion Ignatieff (who has 11 honorary doctorates, has written seventeen books including several on international relations, and held a position at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government) might have on the subject, Israel really is as simple as being an apartheid state and Ignatieff is not just wrong but actually “unethical” for criticizing Israeli Aparteid Week. After all, Day points out, a range of (unnamed)
“Scholars, activists, international advocates, civil society leaders and UN officials have observed that the occupation, checkpoints, walls, relocations, and home demolitions committed by Israel in Palestine have created a system of racial separateness and dominance. Thus, they have applied the term “apartheid” because of its obvious and internationally recognized applicability.”
Then Day really outdoes himself:
Western Canada High School Report Card
A roundup of the Report Card’s release.
Lucid Piece on Light bulb Bans
The role of government should be to ban fluorescent light bulbs, because it is they that allow private profit at the public expense.
Featured News
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...
Cheer Up –The World is a Wonderful Place: This Christmas, let’s put the problems of today in the context of unprecedented progress.
This Christmas, it’s worth putting the troubles of our time into context; two centuries of continuous improvement in human welfare and better environmental custodianship.
I’ve Seen the Future and the Private Car is Alive and Well: How mobile phones with GPS will make private transport dramatically more efficient
The advent of mobile GPS technology will rapidly bring down the time and effort costs of ride sharing, and may dramatically improve the efficiency of how people use private cars.
Just Another Brick?: Brad Wall finds himself in an interesting position after the BHP Potash takeover rejection
With his political stocks riding high in Saskatchewan and across Canada, Brad Wall is now in a position to move on tax reform and use his influence against the policies of supply management and single desk wheat marketing.
Having It Three Ways: The Competing Interests of the Customer, Investor and Employee in Saskatchewan’s Crown Corporations
The people of Saskatchewan play three competing roles in the Crowns; they are simultaneously the investor, the customer, and often the employee of the same companies. Too often, benefits for one role are promoted without considering what it means for the same people’s interests in the other two roles.
High Fashion versus the Private Car: Alternative lifestyles will always be trendy, but the car is mainstream for good reasons
It’s so trendy to deride the private car today that it often features in urban planning only as a necessary evil to be tolerated at best. Public policy should be more enthusiastic about what private motorised transport has done for people, and in particular how driverless cars, electric cars, and road pricing can alleviate the concerns that some people have about them.
Climate Terrorism: Was the “No Pressure” video a glimpse into how climate change activists really think?
A recent climate activism video from the group 10:10 which is widely trusted in the climate activism community has revealed a rare glimpse of a movement that has scant regard for the rights and dignity of others.
Taxi Industry Reports Tired and One Sided: Ignores past seventeen years of evidence.
The people of Regina and Saskatoon have been sold short by taxi industry studies that don’t look at all the available evidence, in fact ignoring all evidence published since 1993.
Global Trade: Should Saskatchewan be an Australia or a Tasmania?: The breadth of human collaboration has defined prosperity for eons.
Open trade drives prosperity by allowing specialised labour and the exchange of new ideas, a forward looking Premier should not be saying things like “he doesn’t understand how we could benefit” from foreign investment such as BHP Billiton’s investment in PotashCorp. Through the long lens of human history the answer is obvious.
Let’s Get Rational About Recycling: Good environmental custodians do what’s right, not just what feels right.
Advocates of greater subsidies for recycling should provide hard facts on why it is the best way to lower waste management impacts in each case.