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....
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Big Tech Influence Can Tip Elections
Behavioural psychologist Robert Epstein believes Google can and does influence voters and that research teams in Canada and elsewhere need to monitor how users are being swayed. Epstein, the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today and founder of the American...
Demand Fairness from Ottawa and Edmonton
A few weeks ago, Albertans voted to reduce the inequities in the federal equalization program. The deficit between the dollars that leave to and come back from Ottawa has recently been as high as $27 billion in one year. During times of crisis, it feels like salt in...
Inflation: They Win, You Lose: Politicos, Cronies Fleece Canadians with Monetary Expansion
One of the most widespread economic myths is that inflation—the reduced purchasing power of a currency—is a win for a nation, a sign of a booming economy. For the privileged classes in government and with initial access to monetary expansion, it is a win. For everyone...
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Cities Have to Expand for House Prices to Fall
The cost of actually building a house does not vary that much across Canada The Ford government’s plan to expand the land supply available for housing has evoked the usual dog whistles about “urban sprawl” by interests apparently unaware of the strong...
How We Teach Reading Really Does Matter
Reading is the most important skill taught in school. If students don’t learn how to read, not much else that happens there is going to matter. That’s because being able to read is important in virtually every job. Without the ability to read, life itself will be a...
San Francisco to Canada: Hate Motivated Crimes—Thinking Globally and Acting Locally
San Francisco, by all accounts a liberal city of diverse communities, is in the grips of what by many is seen as a spree of racist attacks against its Black and Asian residents. According to some reports, anti-Asian crimes have more than doubled while hate crimes...
Canada’s Best Doctors Suffer the COVID-19 Inquisition
Some of Canada's best doctors have suffered undue trouble for sharing their concerns with lockdowns, masks, social distancing and COVID-19 vaccines. Authorities in the medical profession have treated these physicians like apparent heretics under the threat of...
Inflation and the Collective Debt: Consequences of COVID-19 Measures
The economic consequences of COVID-19 and the shutdown of the economy are difficult to evaluate. But some of them have begun to appear and risk hindering recovery. Inflation is one of these harmful consequences. In the USA, consumer prices jumped 4.2 per cent in the...
Computer Models, Like “Selfies,” are not Reality
In a recent article about climate change, Seth Borenstein, a science writer with the Associated Press, gave us a master class on how to sell the results of a computer model as if it represents reality. In the Borenstein world, a group of scientists can take a...
Air Canada Needs Travellers, Not Bailouts
A year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, the only thing keeping Air Canada alive is the federal-government bailouts. They are delaying the inevitable and sensible way out: cutting travel restrictions, encouraging tourism by ensuring effective containment and...
China’s Intensifying Estrangement and Nativism may Make its Scientific Progress Stagnate
One of the most notable features of Nazi regime in Germany was its anti-intellectualism. While it claimed to be in the forefront of scientific and technical advances, its ideology and totalitarian rule made free enquiry and interchange between scientists and other...
Evasive Accountability: A New Norm for Police and Security Services in Canada
Since the founding of this country, a totalitarian, closed form of government has been considered unacceptable and un-American. The public assumes they have the freedom to be left alone and to live a life in privacy, while the government is believed to be open...
Interest Rates do not Merely Parallel Inflation Upward—the Inflation Risk Premium can Escalate too
It is not entirely clear whether the Canadian and the global economies are heading for a new inflationary era. It may turn out that inflation is not only elevated from recent negligible levels, but escalates, steadily at first, and then dramatically, as it did in the...
CUSMA the New NAFTA: Boon or Bane For Canada?
In 1994, the United States, Mexico and Canada created a free-trade region with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Considering the fact that the USA is the largest economy in the world (from 1994 to present), NAFTA was a true asset for the Canadian...