This is part 2 of a 6-part series examining the impact the construction of two heavy oil upgraders during Saskatchewan’s Grant Devine Government. The discussion hails from the recently published Frontier Centre book “So Much More We Can Be: Saskatchewan’s Paradigm...
The new Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is correct when he says governments discourage work by taxes and clawbacks. The Marginal Effective Tax Rate (METR) measures what government takes from each new dollar earned in taxes and in clawbacks of income-related...
Earlier this year, a group called Equity Matters asked the province to establish an education equity secretariat. They want this office to oversee equity officers working in Manitoba schools. Equity Matters wants to ensure that all Manitoba students are reflected in...
The Regina NewGrade Upgrader, now known as Section III of the Regina Refinery Complex, was contentious at first as low oil prices cratered its economics. But three decades later, it’s integral to the 130,000 barrel per day refinery. Photo by Brian Zinchuk This is part...
For a public sector workforce expecting to retire with a good pension, the “health” of their defined contribution pension plans are dependent on both the market and the actions of the provincial government. Recently, Pallister’s government seems to be stalling on...
The Thunder Bay Police Services Board (TBPSB) was disbanded in 2018 after an investigation by Senator Murray Sinclair found the board had failed to deal with the “clear and indisputable pattern” of violence and systemic racism against First Nations people in the...
When Hong Kong pro-democracy protests stalled a US-China deal last year, they showed how sensitive trade is to domestic political unrest. Few observers noticed, however, that Chilean demonstrations forced the cancelation of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation...
"The red coats we know, but who are those little black devils?” This was the question posed by a Métis prisoner after the Battle of Fish Creek. Thus was born the nickname of the military unit that would later be known as the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, one that had been...
Depending on the part of the world you’re in, the mention of economist, Mark Carney, will elicit different responses. In Canada, Carney is widely credited with steering the country through the rocky waters of the 2008 financial crisis, but in the United Kingdom he is...
Eucalyptus forests are particularly inflammable and this year’s Australian bush fires have, so far, ravaged close to 20 million hectares, about 2½ per cent of the continent, claiming 29 lives. The proximity of the fires to Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra left them...
On a winter river bank, a scorpion approaches a frog. “Mr. Frog, would you carry me across the river?” “Do you think I am crazy, Mr. Scorpion? You could sting me and kill me.” “But why would I sting you, when I would drown as a result?” “Hmmm. Maybe.” “Be reasonable,...
“Give me liberty or give me death” was a battle cry that many people will remember hearing, but few will recall the statesman who said it. Even fewer will know what it meant. These seven words concluded a speech given by Patrick Henry on March 23, 1775; a speech that...
One of the principal advances of the past two centuries has been the drastic reduction in poverty and the rise of a large middle-class, a process expertly detailed by economists Diedre McClosky and Robert Gordon. At the heart of this trend was the increase in the home...
The Cancel Culture has claimed another victim. Renowned poet George Elliott Clarke has backed out of giving the University of Regina’s Woodrow Lloyd Lecture over accusations from Indigenous activists that he associates with another poet who once did a bad thing. His...
Facts that are inconvenient to the “woke” social justice narrative have to be explained away. The narrative is that we live in a class society in which whites, males, heterosexuals, Christians and Jews, and the rich all oppress people of color, females, LGBTQ++,...