The Business Council of Manitoba has proposed a one per cent increase in the provincial sales tax dedicated to infrastructure.
Equalization
Financial Reality is Needed in Maritime Canada: David Mackinnon addresses the Charlottetown Rotary Club, April 2, 2012 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
I’d like to start my presentation with a warning. The warning is that I’m going to speak very frankly about difficult issues. I will be taking fundamental issue with the approach the federal government, P.E.I., Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Manitoba have been taking in relation to the many subsidies the Government of Canada provides to regions.
Quebec Students Need Lesson on Equalization
It would appear Quebec university students need to learn a lesson on equalization, fairness and pulling their own weight. Frankly, so does Premier Jean Charest and the rest of the province as well.
The Coming War of the ‘Have-Nots’: The system is deeply biased against Ontario
Caterpillar’s closure of t he Electro-motive Diesel plant in London, Ont., is troubling, not just because of the loss of 465 wellpaid jobs, but also for what it says about Ontario’s ability to compete for manufacturing jobs.
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Fostering a Constructive, Business-Friendly Regime Sustains Innovation, Not Government Money
For standards of living to grow, productivity growth must be strong and continually renewed. That is one notion that nearly all economists can agree on. So, it is not surprising that politicians scramble to discover new or not-so-new ways to boost productivity growth....
Big Tech Influence Can Tip Elections
Behavioural psychologist Robert Epstein believes Google can and does influence voters and that research teams in Canada and elsewhere need to monitor how users are being swayed. Epstein, the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today and founder of the American...
Equalization Is Broken And It Can’t Be Repaired
Dalton McGuinty says the federal equalization scheme is "perverse" but that's not the half of it. No one has any idea whether it works the way it is supposed to but, meanwhile, it is acting as a brake on Ontario's economy and fostering a culture of dependency among...
Bryan Schwartz
“If everyone is beholden to government, if you have a supplicant society, people are hesitant about engaging in free thinking and forthright criticism of government because that’s their funder. The other thing is that if you’re dependent on government you are less likely to think imaginatively and innovatively and cleverly about how to solve your own problems.”
To Get There From Here
Rather than aimlessly drifting on a burgeoning stream of federal handouts as the Doer government has done since arriving in office in 1999, Mr. McFadyen declared that he wants, within 20 years, to see Manitoba become a “have” province free of dependence on the rest of Canada to pay 40 per cent of its bills, and to double the population over that same time frame.
Why Alberta Is Not Ontario
Alberta’s early influences were different. European settlement came mostly later with a different mix of immigrants especially early in 20th century, so few migrants to Alberta had any ancestral fear of Americans.
Ontario and Public Sector Padding in Manitoba
Despite the intent of equalizing the ability of provinces to care for Canadian citizens, the program has had the unintended result of leaving recipient (have-not) provinces with many more public sector staff than those provinces that support them.
An Answer for When Ontario Comes Calling
Ontario is straining under the weight of carrying much of Canada’s dysfunctional federal transfer programs.
CBC Radio – Equalization with Bryan Schwartz
Listen to Bryan Schwartz speak on CBC radio about equalization and national economics. (7 minutes)
Equalization Payments Equal Unfairness
“Equalization is now largely decoupled from Ontario’s economic performance.” Equalization, in other words, requires that Ontario keeps paying – whether it is rich or poor.
Is Ontario the Patsy Because of Equalization?
Why, he asks, can Manitoba spend $1.2-billion to subsidize electricity prices while it collects $1.8-billion this year in equalization payments? How can Atlantic Canada, with a population of just two million, afford 15 universities? The answer, he says, is the “tidal wave” of funding it gets from Alberta and from Ontario, whose taxpayers provide 44 per cent of federal revenues.