I have good news for commentators who say Manitobans will be sick, stupid, and broke if this tax-cutting PC government is re-elected: they’re wrong. The unadjusted StatsCan numbers for August 2023 prove it. As a total percentage of wages and salaries, Manitoba pays...
All levels of government in Canada collect around $20 billion in taxes on gasoline and diesel sales per year. The present government in Ottawa hopes to ban the sale of internal combustion vehicles by 2035. There are many practical reasons this will not happen but...
At age 69, Blaine Higgs is the oldest premier in New Brunswick’s history. Thankfully, the Progressive Conservative premier shows more wisdom on the energy transition than the Canadian prime minister almost two decades his junior. Higgs graduated from the University of...
Wildfires in Canada and unseasonably high temperatures in Europe are being blamed on climate change, escalating the perceived urgency to “do something” about carbon emissions. In Canada, it seems no volume of emissions is too small to worry about. B.C. taxpayers will...
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...
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...
The Auditor General of Ontario’s report is a technical document that few people actually read. Bullet points from executive summaries of such reports are often used as the basis for newspaper columns and political talking points in the grown up equivalent of the game...
Premier Sellinger’s decision to increase the provincial sales tax to 8 percent has hovered over provincial politics like a dark cloud for more than a year. The issue won’t go away. Sellinger himself admitted that the lingering unpopularity of the tax increase...
Speaking points of presentation to the House of Commons Finance Committee by Frontier Centre President Peter Holle on September 29, 2014. Three broader, longer term opportunities to keep the federal budget balanced while promoting better public policy that would...
Tales of government waste make for excellent news headlines. Bev Oda's infamous $16 orange juice probably got more media attention than the $45 billion F35 procurement debacle. Part of the reason is that is that people understand the value and cost of orange juice. It...
If you hoped for a balanced budget or a serious break on your taxes in the March 6 budget, you were disappointed. As to the budget itself, the government's increasing reliance on Crown corporations to pay its bills, along with its methods of reporting and accounting,...
The StarPhoenix editorial Think tank lacks thought (SP, Jan. 27) about the Frontier Centre's Responsible Budgeting project explained that trying to compare the amount of money that a provincial government spends on health care or housing to the amount spent by the...
Responsible Budgeting is a new project by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy aimed at giving citizens a broader understanding of how provincial and territorial governments receive and spend money in relatable terms. In a time when many governments are hard-pressed...
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy is pleased to announce the launch of a new report in to the state of provincial government finances across the country. Called Responsible Budgeting, the report, and accompanying interactive website, analyse the 2013 budgets for...
Finance Minister Jennifer Howard seeks advice for the 2014-15 provincial budget. Does she truly want advice, or is the offer made to provide the illusion that government listens to taxpayers? In the 2011 election, the NDP pledged no tax increases. Then it extended the...