Last month, the Ontario government announced a new elementary math curriculum. The province will return to a “back to basics” approach aimed at improving standardized test scores, and will also introduce lessons on financial literacy and coding. Whether these changes...
A recent story covered in The Monitor – a magazine published by the left-wing, union-friendly think tank Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – provides an important lesson in basic economics. The headline of the story triumphantly proclaimed: “Gig workers win the...
Interim financial results for the 2019-20 fiscal year show that the Ontario government ran a $9.2 billion deficit. According to estimates from economists, the deficit is likely to more than triple, largely as a result of the pandemic and economic lockdown, to around...
Amidst the pandemic, the federal government has just given Canadians an extra month to file their taxes (the new deadline is June 1). As people prepare their tax returns, some might wonder if they are getting good value for all the taxes they pay. The answer is that...
A Snapshot of Property Rights Protection in Canada After 10 years
The writ has been dropped and Albertans are off to the polls on May 29. That leaves just four weeks for political leaders and voters to sort out what is arguably the most divisive, yet significant, issue for this election - health care. On Day 2, NDP leader Rachel...
Even as the coronavirus disease has put much of the economy into shutdown mode and caused a run at the grocery stores on some staples such as bread, most of us remain generally well-supplied with food. That is something to be thankful for. It is indeed one of the...
According to many devotees of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, their ideological counterparts in left-wing circles in Canada, and even 62 percent of the audience at a recent TVO debate hosted at the University of Toronto, confiscatory taxes should be levied...
One of the big policy issues for the federal government this year, as well as in the Conservative leadership race, is immigration. By a margin of 63 percent to 7 percent, according to a recent Leger poll, Conservative voters want their new leader to decrease rather...
As the calendar flipped this month to 2020, the federal government has again made the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) tax more expensive. The combined employee and employer contribution rate has risen from 10.2 percent in 2019 to 10.5 percent this year, while the maximum...
Proposals for increased government regulation and unionization raise the question: can workers across the economy be helped by legislative fiat and by increasing the power of labour unions? The answer, quickly obtained from basic economic principles and a brief survey...
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney delivered his first budget in October following the provincial Conservatives’ victory over the NDP earlier this year. His mandate from voters was similar to that of Ontario Premier Doug Ford – to reverse course on the previous...
The Ontario government’s recently released Public Accounts should surely be a source of despair to any taxpayer who reads it. It is the latest reminder that politicians are addicted to spending other people’s money, and will spend it on just about anything. That a...
Corporate welfare handouts are a policy staple of politicians of all stripes. Liberals who mistakenly think government spending is the driver of economic growth love handing out free cash to claim they are “creating jobs.” Conservatives say they are against corporate...
The current push for unionization among some food couriers at Foodora Canada, and also among hundreds of Uber drivers in Canada, will ultimately do more harm than good for workers in the “gig economy.” The reason is that the drive for unionization is a drive for...