Today the Frontier Centre for Public Policy released an independent valuation of SaskEnergy, Saskatchewan’s provincial Crown natural gas distributor. The report authored by financial analyst Ian Madsen estimated the potential market value at an average of $1.164...
Crown Corporations
Valuation Analysis of SaskEnergy
This analysis arrives at approximations of the value of SaskEnergy, a provincial Crown corporation owned by the government and thus the citizens and taxpayers, of the province of Saskatchewan. These valuation ranges could be useful in determining the future ownership...
What We Can Learn from the City That Lost A Million Pounds
There are two types of people in Canadian cities: people who hate cars, and people who hate cyclists. Or so the perception goes. While it is true that many cities have seen bitter electoral feuds over bike lanes and urban sprawl, they are driven more by perception...
Transit And Roads Don’t Need To Compete
In local government, the assumption is often made that a good road system means that public transit must suffer, and vice versa. Sometime roadways and transit are at odds, when light rail or streetcar projects remove lanes of traffic, or when road design does not...
Featured News
Did 2021’s Hot Summer Spark New Green Extremism?
There’s no doubt that summer 2021 was a scorcher. The United Kingdom’s Met Office revealed how temperatures exceeded 30°C in September for only the seventh time in history. In Vancouver, Canada, 2021 was the second hottest summer ever recorded, with daily average...
How ESG Standards Favor Toxic Petrostates
Coercion and vandalism have become commonplace tactics to force insurers off mining and oil development projects throughout the world. Ironically, that clears the way for companies with deep pockets and petrostates whose goal is geopolitical supremacy, not...
Puncturing “Public” Auto Insurance Myths
In a Calgary Herald letter to the editor last week, Alberta NDP MLA Rachel Notley claimed BC has cheaper insurance than Alberta. Wrong.
The High Cost of Canada’s “Free” Parking
Senior Policy Analyst David Seymour and Transport Engineer Stuart Donovan make the case for removing minimum parking requirements from new developments, a reform that promises to improve economic efficiency, transportation, and social equality.
Media Release – Free Parking v. Sensible Cities
A new Frontier Centre backgrounder, How Free is Your Parking?, notes that so-called “free” parking has detrimental effects on economic development, undermine the transportation system, and come at a high cost to low-income households.
How Free is Your Parking?
“Somehow, the urban land use with the biggest footprint and a profound effect on the transportation system has been invisible to scholars in every discipline.” – Donald Shoup, The High Cost of Free Parking (2005) Introduction Drivers in North America typically...
The Myth of Cheap Public Auto Insurance
Few Canadians have much affection for insurance companies; in the event of a claim and a dispute about proper compensation or coverage, insurance rapidly become as popular as hives or H1N1.
$30bn Gamble On Asset Sell-Off As Queensland Dumps Cheap Petrol
Anna Bligh has wagered her political capital by dumping Queensland’s long-cherished 8.35c-a-litre petrol subsidy and embarking on a raft of asset sales in a bid to reduce debt and maintain essential services.
Sask. First Puts Taxpayers Last: Schwartz
The ‘Saskatchewan First’ policy announced by the province last fall to force Crown corporations to divest themselves of out-of-province assets puts taxpayers last, says a former Crown Investments Corp. (CIC) official.
Media Release – More Government Constraints on Saskatchewan’s Commercial Crowns = Less Value Over Time
Commercial Crown corporations face a different set of operating constraints than do private companies. These constraints might be expected to result in a diminished company value over time, perhaps to the benefit of achieving other public policy goals. As such, commercial Crowns should be subject to periodic reviews to clarify the costs and benefits of this trade-off.
More Government Constraints = Less Value
Commercial Crown corporations face a different set of operating constraints than do private companies. These constraints might be expected to result in a diminished company value over time, perhaps to the benefit of achieving other public policy goals. As such, commercial Crowns should be subject to periodic reviews to clarify the costs and benefits of this trade-off.