Can we trust our government and medical establishment? Not entirely. Some glimpses of Health Canada’s approach to prescription drug safety are less than assuring. Public policy should be guided towards more drug safety, not less. Health Canada was solely funded by...
Alberta’s debt has grown exponentially over the last decade, surging from under $10 billion in 2010 to $98 billion in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has set off a trap that earlier provincial administrations laid by their excessive reliance on fossil-fuel revenues. On...
Canada’s energy security is top of the news this week with the threatened closure of Line 5, a cross-border Canadian oil pipeline that has been operating since the 1950s. It supplies nearly half of the Ontario and Quebec market for light crude oil, light synthetic...
The massive debt that Canada’s federal government and other governments around the world took on to face the economic and other fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic is the elephant in the room. This debt could soon become intolerably hard to service if interest rates...
How leftist are Canadian universities? The answer is “very.” This was confirmed in the last in-depth study on the matter. Even though the study is somewhat dated, nearly every piece of data and less methodological approaches have shown the same thing. Canada’s...
There’s a long-standing convention that applies to the use of all medical drugs: A person considering the use of a drug for medical or prophylactic purposes is advised to consult with his or her physician about its possible use. It’s assumed that the physician is up...
"The best social program is a good job." - Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Unemployment is notoriously higher among Canadian Aboriginal people than among the general population. Some observers emphasize the need for better government programs of education, job...
Michael Zwaagstra joins John Gormley to discuss Education Assessment Fads.
Provincial, or ‘Crown’ ownership of public utilities is a very common feature of life in Canada, and, until recently, rarely questioned. These very large companies are the monopoly providers of electricity, water, and sometimes gas, in all but a few Canadian...
Canadians benefit from a quality of life that few in human history could even conceive of. Unfortunately, many Canadians at the lower end of the income spectrum haven’t shared in those gains. A recent Statistics Canada report shows that while the middle class is...
With announcements coming as regular as church bells ringing on a Sunday morning, it is clear that regardless of reason, risk and ratepayers' pocketbooks, the Selinger NDP government will push Manitoba Hydro into a potentially devastating expansion. With the Clean...
Governments have always had a tendency to claim new responsibilities and new regulatory powers. They have also proven to be tenacious business owners. Once Crown corporations are created and have met their purpose, politicians seem to find it hard to let them go and...
Of all the harsh lessons being learned by overly idealistic observers of international politics in recent weeks, perhaps none is so poignant as the one taught by the vote at the UN Security Council on March 15 over a resolution aimed at deeming the Crimean referendum...
Contrary to the popular view, Detroit is not the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. New York City had filed for bankruptcy in 1975 before the process was stopped by a last-minute deal between city officials and municipal unions. There were 10 times as...
Emirates CEO Tim Clark says the airline industry considers the Gulf giant its “bête noire” –the “monster of the Middle East.” With two-thirds of the world living within eight hours of its Dubai hub, it seems the whole world is now changing planes in the Middle East....