“It’s ironic that the United Nations should be hosting its latest climate negotiations in China. Not only is China now far and away the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide — believed by many (but not me) to cause global warming — China is also the main saboteur of negotiations for a deal to replace the Kyoto accords.”
Worth A Look
Bernier Seeks End To $40-billion In Social, Health Transfers To Provinces
“Calling for an end to $40-billion in social and health transfers to the provinces, Maxime Bernier is criticizing his own government’s policies in areas of provincial jurisdiction and laying another plank in his platform for a future Conservative leadership bid.”
Are We Sliding Into A Tyranny Of Good Intentions?
“‘I am of two minds about democracy,’ he writes, ‘and so is everyone else. We all agree that it is the sovereign remedy for corruption, war and poverty in the Third World. We would certainly tolerate no other system in our own country. Yet most people are disenchanted with the way it works. One reason is that our rulers now manage so much of our lives that they cannot help but do it badly. They have overreached. Blunder follows blunder.'”
Black Crosses and Black Deaths: Attacks on coal-mining and use would trample on hopes, progress, living standards and lives
“When we see the Black Crosses, we need to remember the blessings of coal-based electricity: the economic uplift, the enhanced quality of life it provides for millions of working class Americans of every color.”
Featured News
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...
Private Water Management Helps The Poor
Only five percent of global water management today is private. It is governments who mismanage and misallocate water to farmers and other special interests, as well as the politically connected, especially in poor countries. Not only does public ownership and management of water resources harm the poor, it also harms the environment by encouraging waste.
Don’t Regulate the Suburbs: America Needs a Housing Policy That Works
Senior Fellow Wendell Cox and Ronald Utt examine housing policies under consideration in the United States, focusing on the negative impact of ‘smart growth’.
Pink Mausoleum Blues – What Hurts Ontario Hurts Canada
Starting imperceptibly several decades ago, however, Ontario’s economy began to lose steam. Now it’s come to a stop. The consequences for province and country are immense. All of which means that, after years of focused attention on Ottawa and Quebec City, the government that really counts today sits in the Pink Mausoleum at Queen’s Park.
School Vouchers For All Under GOP Bill
Voucher supporters say parents have the right to choose where their children attend class and that competition from private schools will make public schools stronger.
The Rights Wheel of Fortune
Our human-rights commissions have made it easy to exploit the system. Too many of the cases they accept are frivolous or marginal, and too many of their decisions are, to most of us, absurd.
You Can’t Spend Your Way Out of the Crisis
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key is returning his country to a formula for prosperity that’s worked in the past. As in Britain, the U.S. and Australia in the 1980s, New Zealand’s government implemented a wide-ranging program of economic liberalization, including deep reductions in tariffs and subsidies, and privatization of state-run industries.
Recession Heralds a New Era in Government
The economic crisis presents Ottawa and the provincial governments with an opportunity to embrace a more radical phase of reform. In doing so, they can create a more agile and resilient public sector and help Canada become more competitive to meet future challenges.
Leaders Go Left, But Economists Get Back To Basics
The conventional view at Davos is that a previous consensus in favor of free enterprise has taken a huge beating from the Great Crash of 2008-2009. What is much less known is that many economists are not willing to play along. Instead, the crisis seems to have scared many economists of all kinds–including some previously heterodox–to reassert the orthodox recommendations of Econ 101.
The Green-Jobs Engine That Can’t
If green-job claim sounds too good to be true, it’s because they are.