The Auditor General of Ontario’s report is a technical document that few people actually read. Bullet points from executive summaries of such reports are often used as the basis for newspaper columns and political talking points in the grown up equivalent of the game...
Steve Lafleur
The Future of Public Transportation Has Arrived – and It’s in Cleveland
Support for public transportation has grown significantly over the past decade in North America. Major transit expansions were key issues in the recent Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg elections, and ambitious plans were green lighted by voters in each of those...
Now is the Time to Harmonize Manitoba’s Provincial Sales Tax
Premier Sellinger’s decision to increase the provincial sales tax to 8 percent has hovered over provincial politics like a dark cloud for more than a year. The issue won’t go away. Sellinger himself admitted that the lingering unpopularity of the tax increase...
What We Can Learn from the City That Lost A Million Pounds
There are two types of people in Canadian cities: people who hate cars, and people who hate cyclists. Or so the perception goes. While it is true that many cities have seen bitter electoral feuds over bike lanes and urban sprawl, they are driven more by perception...
Featured News
There’s Nothing Fair About Canadian Health Care
For the past 14 years, Vancouver surgeon Dr. Brian Day has led the charge for health-care reform, pushing for the right of patients to pay for private care if their health and well-being are threatened as a result of waiting in a stagnant and overburdened public...
Transformers: More than Meets the Eye
The path to net zero, based on the much disputed belief that carbon dioxide is a pollution, is more steep and impractical than most people realize. Replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity will require much more power generation and a greatly upgraded grid to...
Why Families are Moving to Texas and Hipsters are Moving to Pittsburgh
Many municipal politicians, particularly in mid-sized cities, aspire to turn their city into the next trendy place, following in the steps of Portland or Brooklyn. Meanwhile, lesser fashionable places such as Houston, Phoenix, and Atlanta are swallowing up migrants...
There’s No Such Thing as a Free Parking Spot
A Calgary non-profit made headlines recently when it was revealed that the organization was required to build a parking lot for an affordable housing complex that is effectively empty. The housing is provided specifically for helping people transition from out of...
Legalize Soft Drugs to Reduce the Availability of Hard Drugs
Does caffeine lead to cocaine use? Obviously not. But what would happen if caffeine was outlawed? Naturally, a black market would emerge. Drug gangs, which are highly skilled at operating outside of the law, and have pre-existing distribution channels, would begin...
Frontier Centre Releases A Blueprint for Reorienting Canadian Drug Policy
Today the Frontier Centre for Public Policy published A Blueprint for Reorienting Canadian Drug Policy, a new report by policy analyst Steve Lafleur and research intern Andrew Chai. In the report, the authors assert that the War on Drugs, in its current manifestation,...
A Blueprint for Reorienting Canadian Drug Policy
"I think what everyone believes and agrees with, and to be frank myself, is that the current approach is not working, but it is not clear what we should do," said Prime Minister Stephen Harper after a 2012 meeting with leaders of governments from the Americas.1 The...
Portage Place Calling for Creative Fix
Portage Place was dealt a major blow when Landmark Cinemas announced the closure of the Globe Cinema. Having previously lost McNally Robinson as well as the Imax theatre and a few higher-end retailers, this will further the perception the mall is in a death spiral....
What We Can Learn About Infrastructure from the Katz Years
Mayor Katz’s tenure has been notable for significant infrastructure successes and failures. On the one hand, we have the fire hall land swap deal and the new police headquarters. On the other hand, we have the immensely successful Chief Peguis Trail and Disraeli...
Providing Mobility in Communities That Can’t Fill a Bus
Many small communities struggle to provide adequate transportation to people with limited mobility and those who cannot afford to drive. Unlike major cities, public transit use in small communities outside the heart of metropolitan areas is rarely a lifestyle choice....
Canada Should Make Temporary Foreign Workers Permanent
The Temporary Foreign Worker program (TFWP) has recently become a hot-button issue as stories of employers abusing the system roll in. The government is scrambling to identify reforms that will satisfy both employers and the broader public. Offering more prospective...