The choice we face is clear: a modest expansion of greenfield development or greater housing poverty For 18 years, I have been monitoring international housing affordability, as author or co-author of the Demographia Housing Affordability series. The latest...
The April 1982 Saskatchewan election proved to be a major turning point in the province's history. Over its nine years in office, the Devine government commenced and completed numerous policy initiatives in spite of considerable challenges including two recessions. ...
If one was to discuss the state of the world’s democracies in September of 2019, it would look entirely different than it does today in 2022. Three years ago, Canadians generally thought that: our democracy was relatively strong and citizens would defend their...
One of the greatest books that explain how the world works is Propaganda by Edward Bernays. The man dubbed “the father of public relations” applied the psychological ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud upon the masses, triggering their basic motivations to the benefit of...
It’s a well-known pattern in public policy – profligate politicians damaging their economies with out-of-control spending, massive borrowing and higher taxes – inevitably leading to fiscal crisis, sharp declines in growth and ultimately rapidly falling currency value...
Mass hysteria is the spontaneous manifestation of a particular behaviour by many people. There are numerous historical examples: Middle Age nuns at a convent in France spontaneously began to meow like cats; at another convent, nuns began biting one another. In...
The recent unhappy news that Canadian taxpayers will soon be at least partially bailing out the government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the owners of Nalcor, which is completing the massively over-budget and behind-schedule Muskrat Falls power plant, may be the least...
When Artur Pawlowski came to Canada in 1995, he did not think it would turn out as it has. The pastor of Calgary’s Street Church, famous for his confrontations with police, says Canada looks too much like the Communist Poland he grew up in. “I grew up seeing police...
“Government spending is taxation. When you look at this, I’ve never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity; let alone I’ve never heard of a poor person taxing himself into prosperity.” Arthur Betz “Art” Laff er is one of the world’s most renowned...
Canadian and British regulators are on an entirely different wavelength to a significant portion of the cryptocurrency market and industry, implementing new regulations and casting doubt on the future of decentralized digital currencies. It comes at a time when China...
There are many natural and geo-political phenomena that will affect the next several decades; climate change, COVID-19 and its variants, social unrest, and rising tensions between China and the United States amongst them. As governments and societies learn to...
When I audited an economics class in the Rice University School of Business, the lecturer compared inflation to slow-growing cancer and deflation to a heart attack. The implication was that deflation, which is the declining prices, is fatal and worse than inflation....
The COVID-19 crisis led to significant travel restrictions in the world and in Canada. The country has totally or partially closed its national borders to tourists and non-essential travellers. Within Canada, travel between provinces has been restricted. Indeed, some...
Recently, a previously-mooted huge, estimated $55 billion Liquefied Natural Gas, ‘LNG’, project taking natural gas from Northeastern British Columbia to its northwest coast at Pearse Island received the blessing and explicit financial and political backing from the...
In November 2018, Canada and Mercosur opened negotiations for a free trade agreement. The Mercosur, composed of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay (Venezuela is a suspended member from 2016), represents a bloc representing a GDP of over $3 trillion and a...