Big Topics & Big Ideas
Core Public Sector Reform
A Call for Fiscal Sanity
After more than two weeks of shutting down virtually all federal government services, 120,000 of the picketing workers returned to work just recently. The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) walkout had been brewing since last fall, when PSAC president Chris...
Leaders on the Frontier: Sir Roger Douglas
What can Canada learn from New Zealand?
Timeless Wisdom – The Politics of Successful Structural Reform
It’s a well-known pattern in public policy – profligate politicians damaging their economies with out-of-control spending, massive borrowing and higher taxes – inevitably leading to fiscal crisis, sharp declines in growth and ultimately rapidly falling currency value...
Featured News
Alberta Politics and Empty Promises of Health-care Solutions
The writ has been dropped and Albertans are off to the polls on May 29. That leaves just four weeks for political leaders and voters to sort out what is arguably the most divisive, yet significant, issue for this election - health care. On Day 2, NDP leader Rachel...
There’s Nothing Fair About Canadian Health Care
For the past 14 years, Vancouver surgeon Dr. Brian Day has led the charge for health-care reform, pushing for the right of patients to pay for private care if their health and well-being are threatened as a result of waiting in a stagnant and overburdened public...
Transformers: More than Meets the Eye
The path to net zero, based on the much disputed belief that carbon dioxide is a pollution, is more steep and impractical than most people realize. Replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity will require much more power generation and a greatly upgraded grid to...
Manitoba’s Public Sector Swells While the Private Economy Dwindles
Executive Summary Since 2015 Manitoba has restrained the growth in provincial government administration to a relatively modest 7.9 percent, which is slightly below the growth in the population. Restraint at the provincial level has allowed Manitoba to do slightly...
57 Policy Proposals for Future Leaders to Help Make the Canadian Economy Soar
Executive Summary The various federal political parties are all promoting the policy agendas they believe will foster a sustainably high quality of life for all Canadians. It remains to be seen whether they will attain the success that they aim to achieve. In some...
Federal Employment Growth Unsustainable
Why work for yourself when taxpayers can pay you instead? In the past seven years, more Manitobans than ever have chosen the job security and benefits of federal employment, while the self-employed have begun to vanish. Statistics Canada snapshots show the most...
Right Sizing Manitoba Public Sector Stalls
Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister might best be remembered as the Grinch who stole the 2020 Christmas, forbidding citizens from in-person shopping and gathering for the holiday. However, he has another legacy, more like the Canadian Tire Christmas commercials that...
Cowardly Premiers Avoid Responsibility for Health Care
There is only one taxpayer pool. Whether we are taxed by the provincial or federal governments, it all comes from one increasingly small pocket. The federal government has constitutional health care sovereignty over: Quarantine; The military; Indigenous people;...
Stagflation Begs for less Government not More
The era of low interest rates and inflation has ended, and now both are mushrooming higher. Canadian year-over-year inflation was 7.7 per cent in May, the highest in nearly 40 years but this author predicts it will go still higher. It’s a worthy time for governments...
Politicians almost universally believe that timely, appropriate and voluntary action to remedy structural economic imbalance should be avoided at all costs because it amounts to political suicide. Consequently, as studies by the Organization for Economic Cooperation...
Marx Was Definitely Not Right, Nor Great
Recently, the world was sadly compelled to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. He was indeed, a major figure in shaping history, but definitely not for the good. Marx, along with his patron, Friedrich Engels, created the political-economic...