Downtown Calgary is a big deal (see photo below and photos following the text). Traditional American and Canadian downtown areas (central business districts or CBDs) are a holdover from the pre-auto era. Their geographical limits were largely set by the early Great...
Municipal Government
Defund the Police? No, Defund Sociologists!
The demand currently on the lips of youthful mobs and their academic enablers is “Defund the Police”, a catchy phrase that encapsulates both the innocence and ignorance of the young and the sinister intent of those who will use any crisis to bring down capitalism and...
Targeting Violent Crime: The Sequel of Unintended Consequences
Chicago has experienced a disturbing number of homicides, shootings, and overall violence during the past year. Chicago, like several other American cities, is once again experiencing unprecedented levels of violent crimes, shootings, and homicides, matching the...
The Masked Failure of Command
Police services are once again hard at work preparing annual budget submissions for the next fiscal year. The cost of policing continues to mount year after year, and the justifications seem to repeat year to year as well. The budget for Canada’s largest municipal...
Featured News
There’s Nothing Fair About Canadian Health Care
For the past 14 years, Vancouver surgeon Dr. Brian Day has led the charge for health-care reform, pushing for the right of patients to pay for private care if their health and well-being are threatened as a result of waiting in a stagnant and overburdened public...
Transformers: More than Meets the Eye
The path to net zero, based on the much disputed belief that carbon dioxide is a pollution, is more steep and impractical than most people realize. Replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity will require much more power generation and a greatly upgraded grid to...
Slum Cities and Refugee Camps: Gateways to a Perilous Future
At any given time, there are about 20 million people on the move in the world. When there’s war, terrorism, extreme weather events, or other disruptions, this can grow to 80 million people trying to get to safety. We hear of illegal immigrants crossing borders and...
Allowing Liquor Store Thefts Is Just Dead Wrong
The problem of theft from Winnipeg’s liquor stores is steadily growing more serious. It has become well known to thieves that they can steal with impunity from the stores. They know that the staff have been advised not to interfere with a theft in progress under any...
Municipal Governments should do Less and Spend Less
Municipal spending in British Columbia is rising far too fast. According to a report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the cost of running the municipal government – even after accounting for price inflation and population growth – rose by an...
Day 15 – Frontier’s Advent Calendar
Day 15 - 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 15 we wish that Alberta would deposit 30% of resource revenue into...
Provinces Can Learn About Debt from their Municipalities
As a parent, I have been able to learn from my children. I’ve learned restraint. I’ve found that children are different, and that they still come back to me after they have left the house for guidance and advice. That surprised me, but learning is learning. Maybe it’s...
Administrative Firewall Key to Better Local Government
We are indeed fortunate to live in a free and open democratic society, where we can go to the polls, cast our ballots, and all the votes count to elect people that represent our interests even if they are competing interests. Citizens rely on their local governments...
Separation and Better Government: Adopting an Administrative Firewall
REGINA, SK - The Frontier Centre for Public Policy just released a new paper Separation and Better Government: Adopting an Administrative Firewall on October 1, 2017. This paper examines the centralized and decentralized models of local government in Canada,...
Inter-Municipal Co-operation and Reform: Municipal Amalgamations
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy has just released Inter-municipal co-operation and reform: Municipal Amalgamations. This paper is co-authored by Wendell Cox and Ailin He. Wendell Cox is a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and the principal...
Frontier In The Media – Good and bad news from Alberta: we can fix our broken governments
Originally appeared in the National Post. If you’re really worried about the performance of governments across Canada, and beyond, I have some good news and some bad news. We know what we have to do to fix it. I’ve just attended a “Restoring the Alberta Advantage”...