Saskatchewan is the beneficiary of elevated pricing and improved long term prospects for nearly all of the many commodities it produces: grain, oilseeds, oil, gas, potash, uranium, and even gold, copper and forestry products. While this very good news for both its...
Too much could be read into the recent sagging value of the Euro, British pound, Japan’s yen and Canada’s loonie against America’s dollar. Relative interest rates, trade deficits, and government deficits and trends have major influences. In the longer term, all...
Gerard A. Lucyshyn is Vice President of Research and a senior research fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
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...
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...
The Alberta Treasury Branch (ATB Financial) may be sold to private ownership to subsidize Alberta’s growing deficit, netting an approximate $4 billion dollars in fiscal influx to cover government expenditure.
The way we buy equipment for our military is badly broken. Ottawa’s latest report on how to fix it proposes making it even worse.
Does it bother anyone else that the president of the United States seems to believe that our collective future entails assembling battery parts in a government-subsidized factory for $9 an hour? Is that really what Americans envision for their kids — an assembly line? Because when you look past Barack Obama’s mesmerizingly hollow rhetoric, what he’s proposing is a return of jobs that progress and prosperity have left behind.
Last week’s Alberta Economic Summit was an interesting exercise. The panels of experts presented some sound economic ideas and generated some lively discussion. The interventions from state clients were less interesting because they had not much to say about how to resolve the current problems and because they were unabashedly self-serving. The public sector union reps and heads of public-funded charities predictably wanted more spending and more hiring. One of them, a woman representing the Boys and Girls Club, was shamefully unprepared, quoting wrong facts and making pronouncements without much of an idea of the historical record. Case in point, she claimed that the non-profit sector didn’t exist a century ago. You would think that someone high up in the non-profit sector would know a little of the history of voluntary organizations such as the Salvation Army or the Boys Scouts.
Alberta’s Premier Alison Redford addresses the audience at the First Annual Alberta Economic Summit on 9 February 2013 at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
As an exercise, in and of itself, the Summit was a good thing. As a political tool, it may have bought the premier the room that she needs to convey to Albertans the impression that she is doing something about the economy. Whether the Summit will have any practical benefit remains to be seen. Touted as the First Annual Alberta Economic Summit, it opens the probability that there may be more of them. And if so, their institutionalization can result in creating a specific place for discussing policy ideas that might result in tangible impact.
But the idea was culled in a hurry from political necessity, more than economic need or historical tradition. I say historical tradition because we should not forget that Social Credit wanted and tried to institute government by experts. The experts would create the policy and the politicians would put it into place. Parts of what took place last Saturday exhibited shades of that colourful Alberta past, the premier would be horrified to admit.
I must give credit to the premier for having sat through the proceedings all day, sometimes listening to ideas critical of her doings and undoings, and lack of doing in some instances. I thought that subjecting herself and her MLAs (perhaps most ministers) to the process showed an uncharacteristic amount of humility, for which the premier is not known. It was either humility or meeting a strategic demand in practical politics. Either way, Redford is deserving of credit for it. But it is difficult for me to imagine that the premier will agree to subject herself to the same thing each and every year.
Washington may be a tax reform wasteland, but out in the states the action is hot and heavy. Nine states—including such fast-growing places as Florida, Tennessee and Texas—currently have no income tax, and the race is on to see which will be the tenth, and perhaps the 11th and 12th.
It is clear that this year’s Christmas weather forecast was simply propaganda in support of Environment Minister Peter Kent’s climate change mantra.
Repeat after me everyone: "Businesses don't pay taxes, people do." I wrote last week about companies using tax avoidance (not evasion) to reduce their tax bill. One of those companies, Starbucks, has announced that due to public pressure (and to protect their image),...
The federal government appears dead set on cancelling winter. Parks Canada’s decision to cut funding for the grooming of cross-country ski trails in Prince Albert, Riding Mountain and Elk Island national parks garnered little national attention. It is too easy to dismiss this as an inevitable consequence of government budget reductions. If each budget decision speaks clearly about national priorities the message is that winter does not matter much to the government and, perhaps, to Canadians.
There's an interesting story developing in the UK where many left-wing groups, supported by over-the-top media stories, have been building up pressure against businesses that 'evade' taxes. I put evade in inverted commas there because none of the businesses being...