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
The Swedish Response to Covid-19 versus Canada
In a recent New York Times article, David Wallace Wells asked, “How did No-Mandate Sweden End up with such an average pandemic”. Let’s be clear. This admission from the New York Times, who tried to destroy the response to Covid-19, starting in April 2020 and...
Draconian, Anti-Science Measures During the Pandemic Has Led to Loss of Trust in Our Institutions
Candida Auris is a fungus that, unlike most fungi, can survive in a human body. It is capable of spreading within the body, resulting in an agonizing death. For unknown reasons the fungus is spreading at a rather alarming rate. So far, cases have been confined to long...
Sir Anthony Fisher: The Battle for Ideas for Freedom
Antony Fisher never knew his father. He was killed by a sniper’s bullet in Gaza during World War One when Antony was two years old. Antony and his brother Basil served as pilots in the Royal Air Force in World War Two. They were part of the few in Winston Churchill’s...
Winnipeg Should Scrap Recycling RFP
The City of Winnipeg “austerity” budget predictably nickels and dimes ratepayers, with rate increases and service cuts in response to lower than expected provincial transfers. But, Council has fumbled the ball big time by throwing away tens of millions of dollars in...
Lessons of the Russian Revolution That Are Still Ignored
On November 6, a number of Canadian newspapers commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1917, a small band of fierce, committed, and violent extremists seized control of power in the then-Tsarist Russian Empire, and created the much more...
The Default’s In the Details: How Predatory Lending Practices Doomed the Meadow Lake Pulp Mill
It has been decades since the Devine government was in power in Saskatchewan, but traces of his economic decisions are still remnant in the province today. The 1980s were full of economic turmoil for Saskatchewan, commodity price collapse, extreme weather conditions...
The Size and Cost of the Public Sector in Western Canada
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy and The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) today jointly released The Size and Cost of the Public Sector in Western Canada, authored by Rodney A. Clifton, Jackson Doughart, and Marco Navarro-Génie. This study examines...
Saskatchewan Megaprojects in the 1980s: the Ugly, the Bad, and the Good
Ross McKitrick , September 2016 Canada has had a troubled history of governments pursuing megaprojects that entail large losses of taxpayer money, leading politicians later to bemoan the fact that the project should never have been undertaken. Would better advance...
Revitalizing Manitoba (Updated): From Supplicant Society to Diversity and Dynamism
Special Frontier publication authored by Law Professor Bryan Schwartz discussing a variety of topics affecting Manitoba competitiveness, well-being and prosperity that present a practical roadmap towards a less politicized and more successful province.
Balancing Act: Gradually Reducing The Size and Cost of Manitoba’s Public Sector
Ben Eisen and Jonathan Wensveen examine the cost of Manitoba’s relatively large public sector. By taking into account projected population growth, they argue that Manitoba can significantly reduce the size of its public sector in the medium-term without resorting to drastic cuts, by either freezing or making small, gradual reductions to government employment over the next decade.
Public Administration Wage Growth: Comparing rates of wage growth in industries across the Canadian economy (1998-2009)
Between 1998 and 2009, wage growth for federal government public administration workers grew by 59%. This compares to an average rate of wage growth of just 30% across the rest of the economy.