Winter is challenging for Prairie residents, particularly those with limited mobility. Residents can attest to the fact that life is vastly different at -35c than at -10c. Minneapolis, MN provides lessons for how Prairie cities in Canada can promote mobility in the...
Municipal Government
Preventing the Next Alberta Flood Disaster
Executive Summary • The response to the 2013 southern Alberta floods was effective. Volunteers and governments organized quickly to provide aid and information to the affected communities. • Though the flooding was unprecedented in scale, it was not unexpected. The...
Making Floods Affordable
The 2013 southern Alberta floods were needlessly costly and destructive. The overwhelming costs arise not as a result of an ill-executed response and recovery, but because of a failure to prepare for the possibility of severe flooding by the provincial and municipal...
A Really Bad Argument Against De-Amalgamating the Toronto Megacity
Last Friday, Shawn Micallef, a Toronto Star author, wrote a very bad article about why he believes that de-amalgamating Toronto would be a bad idea. I wrote a letter to the editor to the Star, pointing out how ridiculous the article was, but they ran a letter from the...
Featured News
Let’s Celebrate Reaching Global Population of Eight Billion
Recently, the United Nations estimated that the population of Planet Earth had reached eight billion souls. Despite the chatter of the highly subsidized climate doomster complex this is quite an achievement - it certainly indicates that the carrying capacity of our...
China’s “Truckers’ Convoy”
Anti-lockdown protests are now taking place across China - the Chinese equivalent of our Truckers’ Convoy. The protests are a reaction to the brutal policies that literally lock people in their apartments, when even one infection is detected. As in Canada, when...
Media Release – Local Government Performance Index: Comparative Canadian Municipal Statistics
The Local Government Performance Index affords users the ability to compare financial data among Canadian municipalities.
Improving the Competitiveness of Metropolitan Areas
Centrally-determined national transportation policies are misguided and wasteful. They do not solve the choking traffic problems that plague large urban centers but often make matters worse, undermining the competitiveness of metropolitan areas.
Micro-Targeting Alberta Electorate Obscures Economic Questions: ‘Vote buy” policies weaken policy discourse
The on-going Alberta election campaign is focused on micro-targeted policies rather than matters that affect the long term economic prosperity of Alberta, such as strengthened property rights and a fully functioning water license market.
Alberta Dividends Could Restrain Government Spending
Alberta’s Wildrose plan to pay out energy dividends may bring some structure to the provinces random spending, and may result in greater savings for Albertans.
Alberta Election
From the Calgary Herald
Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce Pushes Municipal Amalgamations
An article in today's Leader-Post announced that the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce is planning to lead a push to amalgamate many of the smaller urban and rural municipalities in the province. The rational is that doing so could potentially lead to cost savings....
Alberta Provincial Election, Day 1:
Unlike most Alberta elections since the 1970s, the outcome of this one cannot be announced in advance. This fact alone makes the start of this campaign the most exciting in a generation.
Co-operation Win-Win for Unions, Taxpayers: Service delivery innovation should be applauded
Winnipeg City Council should be applauded for dipping its toes into the waters of real reform. Under managed competition, a system that allows management and unions an opportunity to cut costs and improve services before the city considers going to competitive bidding.
R.I.P. James Q. Wilson
Political scientist James Q. Wilson passed away today at the age of 80. Wilson is known for co-authoring one of the most influential articles on policing practices in the last century. Wilson and George Kelling argued in a 1982 Atlantic article that minor breaches of...