A Frontier Conversation with Leonard Gilroy. Frontier Centre: Briefly can you describe the traditional procurement process? Leonard Gilroy: In a traditional procurement process for infrastructure, you tend to see a lot of bifurcation of the steps along the way. You...
Regina has a serious taxi shortage. The city has 126 taxi licences for over 200,000 residents. In other words, there are nearly 1600 people per cab. A reasonable person might assume that this is a significant problem, especially in a dispersed city like Regina that does not have a great deal of mass transit. Aside from the fact that taxis are handy for non-drivers, they’re also a pretty big part of mitigating drunk driving. While adding a six taxis won’t hurt, it also won’t have much of an effect.
As flooding in Alberta continues to wreak havoc on people's lives, property and well-being, the media's initial dramatic disaster coverage has started to move on to more human interest type stories. Thankfully it's been mostly good news: survival stories, loved ones...
The federal government is considering mandatory minimum sentences for the sale of contraband tobacco in an attempt to crack down on black market activity. However, federal taxes are driving Canadians to the black market in the first place. Rather than ramping up policing efforts and costs, the government should reduce taxes to reduce demand for black market tobacco.
This past weekend, we learned of the tragic and unexpected passing of Pastor Leon Fontaine at 59 years of age. Leon was a gifted leader playing many roles both nationally and internationally. He was, with his wife Sally, the senior Pastors at Springs Church with...
Testimony before the Public Order Emergency Commission reveals the case for government invoking the Emergencies Act is either weak or very weak. The Prime Minister was, in fact, opposed to members of his cabinet or senior public health officials meeting with protest...
That’s how we got here — a near total breakdown of responsibility at every link in our financial chain, and now we either bail out the people who brought us here or risk a total systemic crash. These are the wages of our sins. I used to say our kids will pay dearly for this. But actually, it’s our problem. For the next few years we’re all going to be working harder for less money and fewer government services — if we’re lucky.
Hayek’s insights into the reasons for government failure remain as relevant to economic and social policymaking today as they were to exposing the catastrophic defects inherent in socialist central planning more than half a century ago. His ideas do not provide ready-made solutions for economic and social problems. But they do offer basic principles to help us set realistic policies and to cope with the difficulties inherent in creating institutions and regulations that will achieve their objectives.
Many journalists claim that the U.S. economy since the late 1970s has been very free, with little regulation; that this absence of regulation has caused markets to fail; that there was a consensus in favor of little regulation; and that, now, this consensus is fading. On all these counts, the reports are false. Specifically, the U.S. economy has not been free since before the New Deal of the 1930s.
The financial collapse was not the long expected and inevitable collapse of a corrupt system. It rather can be attributed to two primary and very concentrated causes. Both causes could have been avoided with skillful regulation: one would have required more regulation, the other less. Finally, both causes were American, pure and simple.
The main difference is that a government that forswears central planning and leaves individuals free to make their own decisions within a system of property rights will typically end up being the government of a prosperous country.
Conventional economics anticipates that because landlords supply rental housing voluntarily, they will react to government-stipulated standards and compliance by either exiting the market or raising prices.
Commissions across the country, each operating on their own codes but upon similar premise, have fallen into disrepute of late because of cases they’ve taken on, dealing with freedom of speech. There are growing demands to clip the extraordinary powers of commissions to stray into adjudication of constitutionally protected rights and laws within the Criminal Code.
Every citizen has an interest and the right of citizens to try and protect or advance that interest in the public square should be respected.
Canada, with 10 times the renewable fresh water per capita as the United States, is by global standards a water heavyweight. Though we boast of our trade muscle on energy matters, Canadians come off as positively paranoid we’re powerless to stop Americans from siphoning our precious water.