There are many natural and geo-political phenomena that will affect the next several decades; climate change, COVID-19 and its variants, social unrest, and rising tensions between China and the United States amongst them. As governments and societies learn to...
Results for "organized crime"
Defunding The Police: Interview with Anil Anand
The Mackenzie Institute interviews Frontier Centre research associate, Anil Anand, a retired police inspector and author of: “Mending Broken Fences Policing.” Anand has worked as a police officer fir thirty years. He has worked on cases ranging from routine...
A New Epidemic of Illegal Firearms
An analysis by the CBC covering two decades of homicide statistics for Winnipeg reveals a major shift in the types of weapons used in the incidents. Winnipeg has seen 42 homicides to date in 2019, more than in any other previous ten-year period.1 Winnipeg police...
A Lesson About Moral Hazard
Not too long ago, governments used to prohibit behaviour that was bad for its citizenry. Gambling was one such activity; it is a practice in which those insufficiently aware of statistical probabilities are induced to lose money to those with a deeper knowledge of the...
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There’s Nothing Fair About Canadian Health Care
For the past 14 years, Vancouver surgeon Dr. Brian Day has led the charge for health-care reform, pushing for the right of patients to pay for private care if their health and well-being are threatened as a result of waiting in a stagnant and overburdened public...
Transformers: More than Meets the Eye
The path to net zero, based on the much disputed belief that carbon dioxide is a pollution, is more steep and impractical than most people realize. Replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity will require much more power generation and a greatly upgraded grid to...
Civil forfeiture laws victimize citizens
Civil forfeiture laws across Canada are unnecessarily victimizing citizens. Rather than cling to these regimes, Canadian provinces need to move towards federal criminal forfeiture procedures found in the Criminal Code, which provide more procedural protection for...
‘Do-gooders’ kept payday loans alive
For decades it was a criminal offence to charge more than 60 per cent annual interest on a loan. It still is, unless it is a "payday loan." Following pressure by provincial governments and the NDP, payday loans were made legal in Canada. Payday loans can't exceed...
Carbon Taxes a War On the Poor: A catastrophic waste of public money
The fixation with a carbon tax is already resulting in hardship on the poor, who must bear the cost of higher energy and food prices. The elderly or single mothers must now choose between heating and eating, at times.
How the Rob Ford Crack Scandal Could Save Toronto: Rob Ford’s political meltdown could lead to the reversal of one of the most disastrous policy decisions in Canadian history: the amalgamation of Toronto.
Rob Ford may be the best thing to happen to Toronto in a long time. Alleged crack-smoking and ass-grabbing aside, the political meltdown of the embattled mayor of Canada’s largest city may inadvertently help undo one of the most disastrous public policy decisions in Canadian history: the amalgamation of Toronto by former premier Mike Harris.
Omertà in Alberta
The Alberta inquiry into queue-jumping in the province’s health system appears to have run into a wall of memory loss.
Corruption costs
Gilles Vaillancourt, the mayor of Laval, Quebec, is the latest casualty of the Charbonneau inquiry into corruption in Quebec's construction industry, as he has announced he will be stepping down. Besides the obvious moral dimensions of corruption, kickbacks and...
Too Many Attawapiskats
It is a good time to take stock of the special challenges facing Canada’s aboriginal population – including deficits in education, job opportunities and standard of living compared to non-aboriginal populations.
BC Lobby to Legalize Pot
Some food for thought here. “I have always had a problem with the idea that the state should criminalize an act which is essentially no more complex than putting a couple of seeds in your back yard, waiting a while and then, when something grows, you put it in your...
Forfeiture Laws Threaten Property Rights: Potential for abuse too great
Asset forfeiture processes in Canada make it too easy to acquire property, including that of innocent people, which is a call for provinces to amend their laws.