Power utilities from BC to Newfoundland have expanded enormously, adding copious debt to provinces. This has burdened consumers and businesses with increasingly higher power bills and will eventually lower their standards of living. With unsustainable debts, the...
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy has just released Public Choice Alternative: Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation by Ian Madsen, a senior policy analyst with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. The paper conducts an in depth valuation of the alternative...
Crown corporations have had a long history in Saskatchewan. The creation of these corporations began by the Territorial Government in 1901 when hail insurance was sold to farmers. In 1944, Saskatchewan elected Tommy Douglas, leader of the CCF, as premier. A great wave...
Day 8 - Advent is the season of preparing for Christmas. Here at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy we want to tell you about some of the things we would like to see under our tree. On Day 8 we wish to end the vast exposure to more debt and higher energy...
The United Nations (UN) was born out of an idea for creating a society of nations, a global community, a brotherhood of nations built on a set of higher ideals. These ideals would give rise to a global village with accountability to each other, including social...
The Alberta premier’s plan to treat the coronavirus as endemic was the way out of the COVID crisis. That he is once again adopting restrictions for the province, for the fourth time, does not negate the endemic approach. But his declaration, paraphrasing President...
The costs of LRT are understated while its benefits are overstated. LRT is often thought of as a happy medium between buses and trains. In reality, it combines their disadvantages. Light rail transit is slow, inflexible, and expensive
Everyone knew last month’s privatization of Indonesian airline Garuda had gone badly, but exactly how badly is only now coming into focus.
Smart environmentalists should have road pricing as their most urgent priority.
Manitoba Hydro needs a full mandate review and governance overhaul if it is to serve the people of Manitoba and become the engine of economic growth it ought to be.
The New Zealand Business Roundtable points to the evidence on privatization.
If the nation is going to reduce its out-of-control spending, the first step is to stop spending money on things we do not need. Despite President Obama’s call in his State of the Union speech for linking 80 percent of the nation by high-speed rail, it is hard to imagine a more unnecessary program.
Several weeks ago the Saskatoon Star Phoenix ran a piece from a U of S professor named Colin Boyd.
Boyd claims that Alberta liquor is NOT cheaper than Saskatchewan liquor. We point out that this 2009 Frontier study found that it is.
Whoever is right about that, there is a more important point that Boyd misses in his article. The price at the checkout is not the full cost of the item. The full cost is the cost of getting the item to your house. Part of this cost is paid at the checkout, and part of it is paid by the customer in the course of getting to the store and then home again. These costs are not only time and travel costs, but also stress and inconvenience. In his article, Boyd implies that having multiple stores in what seems to be a small area is an unnecessary duplication that increases the cost of liquor. Therefore, he concludes, Saskatchewan has the superior system.
Any honest assessment of Calgary’s taxi market would have asked why a tiny minority of plate holders are able to earn monopoly rents of hundreds of thousands of dollars per week. A recent report which acknowledged but evaded this question showed just how powerful are the vested interests in Calgary’s taxi industry.
Is penny pinching resource royalties the ultimate in entitlement mentality, and where does it lead us?