Ottawa has a spending problem, with a worrisome deficit and a debt service problem. Canada’s federal debt is about $1.2 trillion - roughly $30,000 per person, over $60,000 per household. Even worse, the debt is growing, with the current Liberal regime forecasting a...
Public Finance & Fiscal Federalism
The Good Ship Canada is Taking on too Much Water
There’s a reason Justin Trudeau no longer says, “The budget will balance itself.” It won’t. He made the famous comment in 2013 immediately following a Conservative budget. The full quote is, “The commitment needs to be a commitment to grow the economy and the budget...
Peckford: Stopping the Four Orwellian Horsemen —Big Government, Big Press, Big Pharma and Big Tech
Unrealistic—Salim Mansur Essay On Constitutional Change entitled ‘Canada is constitutionally broken, and by the will of the people it can be fixed.’ I appreciate Professor Salim Mansur’s essay concerning Constitutional Change. Unlike many academics today he is...
Bank of Canada, Federal Reserve Should Focus on Vital Main Mission
It is a relief that the U.S. Federal Reserve Board is not veering off into climate theology or other mission-irrelevant distractions. While recent comments of the Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, were unequivocal, comments from the Bank of Canada have not been as...
Featured News
Alberta Politics and Empty Promises of Health-care Solutions
The writ has been dropped and Albertans are off to the polls on May 29. That leaves just four weeks for political leaders and voters to sort out what is arguably the most divisive, yet significant, issue for this election - health care. On Day 2, NDP leader Rachel...
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...
A Year of LNG Royalties/Taxes from a Single Pipeline Could Pay for …
Sitting on top of one of the world’s largest and richest natural resource warehouses is turning into quite a disconcerting distraction. While much of Canada’s population – the heavily urban part for whom “rural” means Whistler, Muskoka, or Mont Tremblant – likes to...
Peckford: Rex Murphy ‘s Column, Danielle Smith and Provincial Rights
Rex Murphy and I see the world and country in much the same way. And we both hail from the Country’s eastern most Province. And he is a national treasure when it comes to articulating the concerns of Canadians about the governance of this place. A true wordsmith...
Preston Manning: Canada’s Economic Future
The following is a condensed version of a speech given by Preston Manning at a Frontier Centre for Public Policy event in Winnipeg on Sept. 22, 2022. Watch the video here. What are Canada’s strengths? We don’t have the largest population. We don’t have the largest...
Manitoba’s Public Sector Swells While the Private Economy Dwindles
Executive Summary Since 2015 Manitoba has restrained the growth in provincial government administration to a relatively modest 7.9 percent, which is slightly below the growth in the population. Restraint at the provincial level has allowed Manitoba to do slightly...
Independence, Leadership, Even Existence of the Bank of Canada Should Be Debatable
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...
57 Policy Proposals for Future Leaders to Help Make the Canadian Economy Soar
Executive Summary The various federal political parties are all promoting the policy agendas they believe will foster a sustainably high quality of life for all Canadians. It remains to be seen whether they will attain the success that they aim to achieve. In some...
Poilievre’s Complicated Tax Issue Made Simple
The new Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is correct when he says governments discourage work by taxes and clawbacks. The Marginal Effective Tax Rate (METR) measures what government takes from each new dollar earned in taxes and in clawbacks of income-related...
Peckford: Alberta and Sovereignty
Anyone who thinks of the word Alberta will likely say, oh, yes, that’s an area in the western part of Canada —a Province of Canada. I think that is how it is known now. Constitutionally it is a Province of Canada. There are no other Constitutions of this nature to...