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 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...
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...
Raising the minimum wage is a popular policy among voters. Recent polls from Ontario found strong support for the province’s minimum wage hike, and in the United States, a Pew Research poll in 2016 showed that by a margin of 52 percent to 46, Americans supported more...
Many British Columbians want car rides from Point A to Point B, and are willing to pay for somebody to drive them. Many other British Columbians have access to cars and are looking to earn some income by driving people between destinations. But the provincial...
Yale University economist William Nordhaus was one of the winners of the Nobel Prize in economics this year for his work on analyzing the long-term economic impacts of climate change and climate policies. Quite appropriately, most media headlines focussed on...
Municipal spending in British Columbia is rising far too fast. According to a report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the cost of running the municipal government – even after accounting for price inflation and population growth – rose by an...
The most recent employment data from Statistics Canada shows a troubling trend. In Q3-2018, the ratio of private sector to public sector employees (excluding the self-employed) dipped to lows that – except for the period of massive “stimulus” spending by the federal...
A few years ago, the federal Liberals told Canadians that they would help the middle class by raising taxes on the rich. According to the early evidence, the plan has flopped. This was entirely predictable. Indeed, in 2015, the C.D. Howe Institute (formerly chaired by...
With much fanfare, the Ontario government has brought back “Buck-a-Beer” by lowering the government-mandated price floor on a bottle or can of beer (with alcohol volume below 5.6%) from $1.25 to $1.00. Some Ontarians who don’t drink or who consume only more expensive...
American taxpayers and workers won a big victory recently, with the United States Supreme Court ruling 5-4 in June in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) that government employees not part of a union could not be forced to...
This is a tale of two very different Alberta budgets. In 2001, the-then PC Alberta government aggressively attacked the province’s corporate tax burden. “Alberta should respond to the world-wide trend to lower corporate income tax rates,” the budget document advised....