For standards of living to grow, productivity growth must be strong and continually renewed. That is one notion that nearly all economists can agree on. So, it is not surprising that politicians scramble to discover new or not-so-new ways to boost productivity growth....
Largely unique among state-owned enterprises, ‘SEOs’, worldwide, Canadian Crown corporations have two key advantages over current and future private sector competitors: non-taxable status and access to low-cost public sector borrowing rates. Other implicit edges...
The hasty, defeatist and craven withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan in August has compelled the so-called “civilized” Western nations and their leaders to confront the failures and errors of the past 20 years, which resemble those of earlier conflicts....
So far this year several new centres of “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era” have been established. The current total of such fonts of wisdom and scholarship is 18. They usually specialize; in the ‘rule of law’, the economy...
This past weekend, we learned of the tragic and unexpected passing of Pastor Leon Fontaine at 59 years of age. Leon was a gifted leader playing many roles both nationally and internationally. He was, with his wife Sally, the senior Pastors at Springs Church with...
Testimony before the Public Order Emergency Commission reveals the case for government invoking the Emergencies Act is either weak or very weak. The Prime Minister was, in fact, opposed to members of his cabinet or senior public health officials meeting with protest...
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is Ontario’s largest electric power generating utility. In 2016, OPG supplied electricity to approximately 50 percent of local and provincial power utilities. OPG‘s wide provincial geographic scope and vast array of productive generating...
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, ‘AECL’, is the federal Crown corporation which develops nuclear technology, mainly now in Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, which sells nuclear isotopes for medical and other purposes. Using an intrinsic value method, and discounting to...
In recent days, a controversy flared up, or was orchestrated, when it came to light that some Canadian pension and other institutional investment funds may have owned shares in an American prison-management company called GEO, and another one called CoreCivic. These...
Toronto-Pearson International Airport, coded as ‘YYZ,’ is the airport serving the Greater Toronto Area, GTA domestically and internationally. It is a non-profit entity governed by several GTA regions, the City of Toronto, the Province of Ontario, and the federal...
Ottawa will soon be participating in the property bubble in a direct, equity-owning way through its new First Time Home Buyer plan. Since the onset of the post-war period, it has been Canadian federal government policy to seek to help low income or dubiously...
All the rage in progressive policy and political circles in the United States, but not quite on the radar in Canada is a fairly new set of ideas and prescriptions called ‘Modern Monetary Theory’, or ‘MMT’, for short. Critics, somewhat unfairly, caricature MMT as...
Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation Limited, or CDIC, is the Crown corporation that insures against losses of chequing and savings account deposits. Using an intrinsic value method, and discounting to the present CDIC’s projected future net income as a proxy for its...
The federal government has boxed itself into a corner in its attempts to square the process for reviewing and approving large mining, pipeline or other projects with the private sector’s desire to have any such process be clear, simple, relatively quick, and not...
Prince Edward Island Liquor Control Commission (PEILCC) is the monopoly Crown corporation which controls and retails all beverage alcohol in Canada’s smallest province, Prince Edward Island. Using an intrinsic value method, and discounting to the present, PEILCC’s...