It’s so trendy to deride the private car today that it often features in urban planning only as a necessary evil to be tolerated at best. Public policy should be more enthusiastic about what private motorised transport has done for people, and in particular how driverless cars, electric cars, and road pricing can alleviate the concerns that some people have about them.
Worth A Look
If Universities Were In Business, They’d Be Out Of Business
“Frosh-week frivolities have ended and some 40,000 new university students across the country have experienced their first weeks of classes. Unfortunately for many, those classes have brought frustration and disillusionment.”
B.C. Set To Prescribe Health Contracts Pegged On Performance
“B.C. is launching its offensive against swelling health-care budgets, promising faster treatment for patients with a new pay-for-performance plan in its hospitals.”
Unfreezing Arctic Assets: A bloc of countries above the 45th parallel is poised to dominate the next century. Welcome to the New North.
“Much of the planet’s northern quarter of latitude, including the Arctic, is poised to undergo tremendous transformation over the next century. As a booming population increases the demand for the Earth’s natural resources, and as lands closer to the equator face the prospect of rising water demand, droughts and other likely changes, the prominence of northern countries will rise along with their projected milder winters.”
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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy!
COVID-19 Emergency Powers Nearly Limitless
The war against the invisible enemy of COVID-19 has unfortunately made normal rights and freedoms invisible as well. Another example manifested on September 13 when Saskatchewan’s premier renewed emergency orders for his province. The list of powers he claimed were so...
The Role of Taxis in Urban Transportation
The weight of evidence argues for opening up the taxi market to competitive delivery, and reducing regulation to safety, customer service and the dispatch system. Winnipeggers deserve a taxi service that the status quo is not delivering and that fine-tuning a failed model will not provide.
Privatize Liquor Stores: Liberals
“I see us going in the direction of evaluating the government’s role in our economy,” he said. “Where’s the government providing goods that are public goods and where are they intruding unnecessarily in the economy? So I do suspect we will be evaluating the role of a lot Crown corporations and a lot entities like that,” he said.
The Dirty Truth
Carbon capture and storage, as these schemes are known, is misguided environmentally, economically, and in the long term, politically too. Carbon capture has only one virtue: It solves short term political problems for both leaders.
Green Cities, Brown Suburbs
Thoreau was wrong. Living in the country is not the right way to care for the Earth. The best thing that we can do for the planet is build more skyscrapers.
Burn Baby Burn
Denmark incinerates about 40% of its rubbish, but it also has a recycling rate the UK can only envy and most importantly only a fraction of Denmark’s waste, about 10%, goes into landfill. Compare that to the UK which buries over half of its waste.
Like Throwing Petrol On Fire
It is now widely considered that Government policy mistakes caused the banking collapses of the 1930s, protectionism aggravated the decline and New Deal spending was largely ineffective. But many Governments, under populist pressures to “do something”, seem to have forgotten those lessons.
The Next Wave of E-Government
When it comes to digital transformation, governments must lead by example. When practical, state and local government should be early adopters of new technology instead of relying on industry to lead the way.
Rudd On A Dangerous, Ill-Informed Crusade
If Rudd is to be believed, all the present problems can be traced back to the “neo-liberal orthodoxy” that dominates economic policymaking. And the solution is a return to social democratic Keynesian policies that existed prior to the mid-70s.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative
Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalized and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize.