The Frontier Centre for Public Policy has just released a new research paper, The Paradox of Equalization Solving In-equity by Increasing Disparities by Jake Fuss, a research associate with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. This research paper offers...
In recent days, readers of the Guardian have read very different articles on equalization, one by Premier Wade MacLauchlan and one by me. This is healthy. One hopes that the debate continues. It is important to be factual as we go forward. For example, Mr. MacLauchlan...
Equalization diminishes productivity, hinders sustainable economic development, and lacks accountability and transparency. The federal government transfers billions of dollars in Equalization to provinces each year without evaluating whether the transfers achieve the...
The controversies that have erupted over equalization in recent days must seem tiresome to many Canadians. Our national debates on equalization have been marked by conflict, obscure technical jargon, little research on the impact of the program, excessive vitriol and...
Artificial intelligence has come a long way. Unlike the rudimentary software of the past, modern-day programs such as ChatGPT are truly impressive. Whether you need a 1,000-word essay summarizing the history of Manitoba, a 500-word article extolling the virtues of...
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a recent rush visit to the Saskatchewan Research Council’s experimental rare earth refining facility in Saskatoon. He touted his government’s efforts to promote rare earth discovery, development, and extraction, along with the...
A spate of bad news Tuesday reminds us that provincial governments, collectively, have a bigger impact on the national economy than Ottawa. By that measure, we’re in some trouble.
James Buchanan, known as one of the founders of public choice economics, has just passed away. Public choice economics is essentially the economics of politics and how organized special interests dominate policy-making.
James Buchanan died on Wednesday, at age 93, and the world lost one of its most creative economic thinkers. Though a free-marketeer to his bones, he made his biggest mark and won the Nobel Prize in 1986 for his work studying economic incentives in government.
I am generally positive about the Harper Government in Ottawa but the biggest area where they fall down on policy is the failure to heed Buchanan’s observations on transfers to governments.
My third wish was for our provinces to take concrete steps to get their finances under control. Yet, once again, debt and deficits grew in every province except Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Imagine that you have a pile of money and several kids. Some of those kids work hard and are quite self-sufficient. Some of them, on the other hand, just never quite seem able to look after themselves. Because you’re rich and you believe all your kids deserve a similar standard of living, you pay the ne’er-do-wells a good allowance accompanied by lots of well-meaning admonitions to try and harder and make something of themselves.
Sunday’s elections in Catalonia could put the wealthy northern region on a path toward independence, possibly triggering a constitutional crisis in austerity-weary Spain.
No one does a better job than David MacKinnon of revealing what he calls “the tragic consequences” of Canada’s broken equalization program.
I will deal with the myths associated with the current equalization system and then devote the largest part of my remarks to the consequences of these myths for Canadians and the politics of actually changing.