Aboriginals are an integral part of Manitoba’s society and, along with everyone else, need to receive a quality education. Current strategies to ensure that are ineffective and should be reconsidered.
Dennis Owens
Aboriginal Governance Index – 2006-2007
How well are Manitoba’s First Nations governed? A groundbreaking Index ranks them according to what their own people think.
Winnipeg’s History of Money Bylaws
The use of direct democracy can put a check on the ambition of politicians even as it speeds the progress of improvements and keeps city taxes affordable.
Pension off School Boards
Manitoba’s modern experience with school divisions is uniformly negative. Let’s modernize school administration and funding.
Featured News
Weaponizing the Law
The indictment of former U.S. president Donald Trump for crimes invented by his political opponents is the most egregious example yet seen of the weaponizing of the law. The United States is now full of examples. However, in Canada, we also see the law being...
“Looking At” Seizing Control Over Western Canada’s Natural Resources
OTTAWA, REGINA - Last week, two things happened that could have profound impacts on natural resources development in Saskatchewan. One is a hint the federal government might want to take control of natural resources away from the provinces, and the other is the...
School Choice: A Policy Whose Time Has Come
The world-wide trend in education is generally moving towards more choices for students and parents. Among countries embracing the trend are New Zealand, Britain, and the United States. Approximately 2700 charter schools have opened in the latter, and research demonstrates that most of them have been very successful.
SOARing Beyond the FRAME Report
The FRAME Report should be expanded beyond measuring inputs expended by the public school system to include information about student achievement.
Educational Accountability in Manitoba
In 2000 Manitoba abolished the Grade 3 standards tests and made the Grade 6 and 9 standards tests optional. Only Grade 12 tests have remained in place on a compulsory basis. These changes have reduced the province’s level of educational accountability.
Gaming the System: Special Education Funding in Manitoba
Manitoba school divisions have perverse incentives to overstate the need for special education funding
Harvard Project Lessons on Self-Government
Major U.S. study shows that reserve communities that have higher levels of economic health tend to be those that have higher degrees of effective sovereignty.
Let Aboriginals Join the Real Economy
The lack of property rights is one cause of Aboriginal poverty. This speech suggests it blocks that community from participating in the real economy.
How Rent Control Killed Affordable Housing in Winnipeg
Senior Policy Analyst Dennis Owens discusses how rent control hurts the poor
Deconstructing the Aboriginal Problem
An important new paper points the way to the resolution of an historic blight on Canadian society – the social and economic health of our First Nations population. Aboriginals as a distinct group have not fully participated in the wider prosperity of the country whose First Citizens they compose.
*What’s Wrong with Medicare and How to Fix It
The authorities in Stockholm remain just as committed to government funding of health care as they ever were. They’ve simply found a better way to do it.