The next Manitoba provincial election is expected in April 2016. With this election on the horizon, it is important to understand the fundamental problem confronting this province. That problem is the size and cost of our huge public sector. For the average Manitoban...
Public Sector
Frontier Centre releases Measuring the Size and Cost of Manitoba’s and Saskatchewan’s Public Sectors
Today the Frontier Centre for Public Policy released a new study documenting how high public sector employment rates in the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan have significant costs to the taxpayers of those provinces. Additional spending on the public sector wage...
Measuring the Size and Cost of Manitoba’s and Saskatchewan’s Public Sectors
In September 2014, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) released a policy paper that looked at the size and cost of Atlantic Canada’s public sector. AIMS researchers Ben Eisen and Shaun Fantauzzo examined Statistics Canada data to empirically assess the...
Manitoba’s Rapidly Growing Public Sector
Manitoba employs considerably more local and provincial public sector workers per capita than the rest of Canada. In an increasingly lower-income province facing a convergence of high debt, structural budget deficits, and flat or declining equalization payments,...
Featured News
Canadians on the Move, to Smaller Communities
The Canadian Dream is increasingly being realized in smaller areas For decades, Canadians moved to the larger cities (census metropolitan areas, or CMAs) with their economic opportunities. The latest estimates indicate that CMAs have 72 per cent of the nation’s...
Leadership Needed in Canadian Healthcare; Apply Within
When the Premiers were first called to a sit-down lunch to talk about healthcare with Prime Minister Trudeau, there was plenty of talk about the potential for systemic change, innovation and accountability. It seemed that Canadians and their leaders were finally on...
State of the Unions: Canadian Unions are Mostly a Public Sector Phenomena
A statistical snapshot of Canada’s union landscape shows declining membership with an overwhelming and growing bias towards the public sector. FC070
Private-Public Wage Disparities
Years ago, I told my sister once people realized how much they were paying public servants such as her, there would be a full scale revolt. Factoring in the short work days, thrice annual long vacations, professional development days, retirement at age 55, and wildly generous pensions, no one of comparable education makes nearly as much on an hourly basis.
There are Plenty of Reasons to Resist Bureaucratic Rule
Earlier this year, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy released a report showing that administrators, the bureaucratic innards of big government, have received wage increases of between 55 and 60 per cent over the past decade. Loggers, who actually do something, such as cut down a tree, received an 11 per cent increase. The Canadian average was 30 per cent.
Want to Cut Costs? Start With the Public Sector: More public servants and compensation costs driving federal wage bill growth
Canada needs an aggressive debt reduction strategy, and an important component of that strategy should be slowing down the growth of the government wage bill.
David Cameron to end ‘State Monopoly’ in Provision of Public Services: Government plans to give private sector bodies automatic right to bid for bulk of public work
David Cameron is to “completely change” public services, bringing in a “presumption” that private companies, voluntary groups or charities are as able to run schools, hospitals and many other council services as the state.
Inappropriate Editorializing by the AP on WI Public Sector Wages
Just read an AP story, reprinted in The Globe and Mail about the standoff in Wisconsin between Governor Walker and the state's public employee unions. The story correctly asserts that this is the first of many battles that will be fought in the coming months and years...
To Slay the Deficit, Trim the Fat
Civil servants are becoming Canada’s new working elite. They boast better pay, better pensions, greater benefits and shorter working hours than their private-sector counterparts.
Byzantine Bureaucracy Leads us Down Road of Ruin
The academic analysis of public policy often ignores the big issues to study wind power or the impact of 9/11 on cross-border shopping. In contrast, think-tanks sometimes discuss important questions that seldom occur to academics and never to governments.
Civil Servants Paid Too Much: Wages and perks for public employees too high
Public sector union leaders insist there’s nothing cushy about life as a bureaucrat, despite a new report that shows that the increases in wages of federal and provincial employees in the past decade was nearly twice those in the private sector.