Sweden Did It Right - We Did It Wrong While most western countries reacted to COVID-19 with shutdowns and relief cheques while imposing a bewildering array of social distancing rules and regulations, Sweden did none of that. Instead, it imposed a minimum number of...
So far, all the federal government schemes and programs to ameliorate the devastation wrought by the ill-considered shutdown of the Canadian economy for nearly three months have focused on compensating individuals and businesses for being unemployed or shutting down....
Someone named Laila El Mugammar thinks about racism every time she stands up for the Canadian national anthem. This is because the composer of the song’s tune, the nineteenth-century Québeçois musician Calixa Lavallée, once founded a blackface minstrel group which...
The decision by the Supreme Court of Canada to dismiss the latest challenge by Indigenous groups over the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project should not come as a surprise. It was a predictable outcome in a line of successive rulings that Trans Mountain had met...
Of late, it has been remarked that most of the active ingredients for key pharmaceuticals in North America come from abroad - usually from China; in the case of generics, often from India. In turn, India often imports its key ingredients from China. So, diverting...
Pope Francis gave a speech recently in which he praised attachment to one’s own culture and place, criticizing global capitalism with its “consumerist vision of human beings” for its “levelling effect on cultures, diminishing the immense variety which is the heritage...
The dream of big-city mayors that Ottawa foot the bill for mass transit is closer to reality. Trouble is, subsidies from afar won’t make a dime’s worth of difference. Other reforms will.
Auckland has a long tradition of making wrong decisions about public transport and several recent announcements indicate we are maintaining this tradition. Auckland is not entering new or unknown territory. A multitude of cities overseas have explored diverse...
Part A of a three part written presentation to the Annual Land Transport Summit, 2007
A chilling look at the “sustainable city” Halle-Neustadt, is a bedroom community built between 1964 and 1990 for about 100,000 people on the outskirts of the manufacturing city of Halle, in East Germany.
Commerce Select Committee to hold an enquiry into Housing Affordability
In recent times we need to ask why Smart Growth carried the day for so long
Two years after a court decision that said laws outlawing the use of private insurance for primary medical care were in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, another case is wending its way through the courts in Alberta. How long will it take for this freedom to be restored to all Canadian consumers?
For many centuries, the Anglo-American tradition has emphasized the fiduciary duty of all those who manage other people’s assets and affairs, such as trustees and directors. This fiduciary duty imposes a higher duty of care on such people, than on the ordinary person....
Manitoba’s “Framework” for transferring power from Ottawa to First Nations has met with an ignominious and well-deserved collapse. The people don’t trust the process.