Winnipeg is building a bigger recycling plant. Estimated $30 Million Dollars. Despite recycling volumes being static for years. So why build a new one? Recycling is facing an uncertain future as recycling standards are in flux, the current quality recyclables may be...
Public Sector
A Price on Pickup
The City of Winnipeg did not choose the lowest bid cost for garbage pickup in 2017. The extra cost to Winnipeg taxpayers will be $16 million or approximately an extra 3 to 4 % on the average homeowner property tax bills. Explained in this new short video from...
Powerful Government Unions Make the Economy Weaker
American taxpayers and workers won a big victory recently, with the United States Supreme Court ruling 5-4 in June in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) that government employees not part of a union could not be forced to...
High-Performance Government
“It’s Time for High-Performance Government,” Howard Risher says in his 2017 book. Amen to that. But how? Risher says, it’s not about efficiency, it’s about making workers engaged. And on that score, government is 30 years behind the curve. The 1990’s began with a...
Featured News
Traditional Teaching is not Obsolete
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...
Ottawa’s Policies Defeat Its Critical Minerals Push
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...
Winnipeg’s Libertarian Socialist: Nick Ternette RIP
Winnipeg’s most colourful community activist was not a predictable big government left winger.
Alberta Workers Taste Reality
Wages once virtually on par with the rest of the country became higher across all public-sector categories, in some cases substantially so, according to the study by Ben Eisen and Ken Boessenkool. (The province’s 36,000 teachers are paid 20 per cent higher than their typical counterparts elsewhere in the country, according to a recent Statistics Canada study.) Alberta’s public- sector salaries consumed nearly 95 per cent of the increase in provincial revenues over the decade analyzed.
The Red-State Path to Prosperity: Blue states with high taxes are struggling to compete for businesses and workers.
You can tell a lot about prosperity in America by observing the places people are moving to and where they are packing up and moving from. New Census Bureau data on metropolitan areas indicate that the South and the Sunbelt regions continue to grow, while the Northeast and Midwest continue to shrink.
Is the federal government sticking to its mandate? Follow a cabinet minister for a few months.
Yesterday I gave a speech on my recent study on how having multiple levels of government involved in the same program areas erodes accountability. Unfortunately, federal involvement in provincial and municipal areas has become so routine that no one bats an eyelash when a Mayor attends a ribbon cutting with a federal and provincial cabinet minister.
Average Federal Worker Costs $114,000: Budget watchdog
As the Conservative government lops thousands of jobs off the payroll, the cost of the average federal employee will continue to climb and could hit nearly $130,000 by 2015, says a report by Canada’s budget watchdog.
Strengthening Fiscal Responsibility Through Decentralization: Empower local voters to increase government accountability and efficiency
The constitution allocates responsibility over most policy areas exclusively to the provinces or the federal government. But the federal government routinely oversteps its bounds. To create more accountable, more efficient government, the federal government should step back and allow the provinces and municipalities to fund and deliver the services that they are responsible for.
Windsor-Detroit Bridge Deal Not the Best Use of Public Infrastructure Dollars
Despite the apparent need for increased bridge capacity at the Windsor-Detroit border, the cost of the publicly funded bridge agreed upon is unnecessary, given that a private company already wants to build a new bridge.
Want to reform government? Start with the Civil Service
Civil Service has much to learn from other countries, according to the Cabinet Office Minister. And why would Britain not want to compare itself against best practice from other countries? After all, many gold medallists are coached by the best in the world who are...
Britain Unleashed: David Cameron Needs a Change of Heart – and Some Fire in His Belly: The Prime Minister David Cameron wants to tweak the status quo, but he should smash it to show decline is not inevitable, says Allister Heath.
This Government’s great tragedy is that it is run by a group of youngish, privileged men who have never known what it is like to be truly excited by economic and political ideas. David Cameron and George Osborne are creatures of the establishment, prisoners of the received wisdom, too interested in power for power’s sake.