The Conservative leadership campaign caused consternation by calling for the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, be fired - creating outrage in the political and media commentariat. Yet, at a time when all sorts of institutions are being called into...
Like a bad memory we’d like to block out, many Canadians ignore or even scoff at the question of what their retirement will look like. For some, it is in the distant future, but for many, it is right around the corner. More than 21.8% of the working population is...
Canada faces a myriad of serious economic challenges. On May 18th, the Canadian consumer price inflation hit a three-decade high, adding pressure on the Bank of Canada to continue with major interest rate increases. This at a time of record level government...
One happy-place for the professional contractor and weekend DIY’ers is standing in line waiting to pull a building permit for their upcoming (most likely started and almost finished) construction project. NOT! Ok perhaps obtaining a building permit for home...
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...
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...
At the end of 2020, Alberta’s debt was estimated to be $98 billion, Manitoba’s was $28.6 billion and Saskatchewan’s stood at $15 billion. These debts are lower than Quebec’s ($220 billion) and Ontario’s ($448.9 billion), but concerns arise about their sustainability....
Alberta’s debt has grown exponentially over the last decade, surging from under $10 billion in 2010 to $98 billion in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has set off a trap that earlier provincial administrations laid by their excessive reliance on fossil-fuel revenues. On...
In his 1776 seminal work, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote: “It always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any...
The phrase “Build Back Better” has drawn ire globally after Western politicians seemingly relished the damaging impact of COVID-19 lockdown policies and the opportunity it offered to radically change our economies. Extremist, insensitive and ill-timed policy...
There is a new entry to Canada’s list of bad ideas promoted during the COVID-19 outbreak: a literal nanny state. Aspirant recipients and allies are seizing on panic to invoke a policy monstrosity that would be a blow to children and families. In September’s throne...
The complexity and perverse incentives of Canada’s Employment Insurance (EI) program are an eyesore on the nation’s economy. Rather than open the economy up to modernity, however, reforms approved by the Senate on March 17 (Bill C-24) increase EI generosity and...
For many years, there has been debate about equalization and other transfer programs and their impact on Atlantic Canada and other regions. Much of this discussion has been technical and difficult to follow. The debate has also been misleading because it focused on...
The “Great Reset” is often labelled a conspiracy theory, but it is real. This is a difficult statement to make because it is precisely what every conspiracy theorist says. In this scenario, however, all it takes is a cursory Google search to see that the World...
On January 17, former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper suggested bitcoin could become a reserve currency alongside the U.S. dollar. Now a business adviser with Harper & Associates Consulting, he nonetheless made a caveat: bitcoin still lacks a key money...