If only Ottawa would put its full force and support behind the energy sector as it does other critical sectors in the economy. In early October, the prime minister announced that he would not back down from the latest American round of attacks on our softwood lumber...
Freedom of speech is not just an ideal to admire, it is a fundamental cornerstone that is required for democracy to survive. However, it appears that the majority of the population in Canada and the United States does not understand what free speech actually means and...
The Thunder Bay Police Services Board (TBPSB) was disbanded in 2018 after an investigation by Senator Murray Sinclair found the board had failed to deal with the “clear and indisputable pattern” of violence and systemic racism against First Nations people in the...
It’s a mystery why some people suddenly eschew their past principles. This phenomenon is especially notable when people of power and fame forget principles they have sworn to uphold as responsible professionals. This mystery is evident in Senator Murray Sinclair’s...
The pandemic has taken the countries, the governments and the people by surprise. Most of them were not prepared to face this crisis. After all, initially, most Western countries refused to panic and wanted to manage the situation like other illnesses like the flu....
One of the eternal questions of public policy is: should governments get into bed with private businesses? Whether it is called a Public-Private Partnership, buying a controlling interest for taxpayers, investing in the technologies of tomorrow or just, avoiding a...
The choice of early Canadians to remain closely tied to the British Empire had a major impact on the development of property rights in this country. Although we as a society tend to see ourselves as having more in common with the United States than with the United Kingdom, our system of land ownership, more accurately called real property ownership, does not permit the same level of rights and freedoms over the land we hold as the U.S. system affords. In the United States, landowners usually hold title to the mineral resources located beneath their land; in Canada, this is never the case.
The Netherlands is the best example of Europe’s move toward market-oriented reform. Before U.S. officials devote even more taxpayer dollars to health care, they should take a long look at how the Dutch have improved their health care system by reducing the government’s role in it.
Niger Innis is Co-Chair of the Alliance to Stop the War on the Poor and the National Spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, one of the oldest African-American anti-poverty groups. It was founded in 1942 as one of the pioneers of the civil rights movement in the United States. Its national Headquarters is located in New York City.
Yet the bottom line remains: Without smart growth’s land rationing policies, the severe escalation in home prices would never have reached such absurd levels. But the disaster in the highly regulated markets will be with us for years. The smart growth spike in housing prices turned what might have been a normal cyclical downturn into the most disastrous financial collapse since 1929. Now the taxpayers are being asked to bail out the mess that smart growth advocates, no doubt inadvertently, have created.
As Congress and the Fed administer aid to financial institutions that ignored the history of past cycles, policy makers around the country must change regulations that are targeted at aesthetically displeasing urban sprawl, but create harmful price volatility.
While labour groups are correct to point out that management should not tell employees how to vote, they should recognize that they themselves are very partisan and should not be using members fees to support political causes.
But now the environmental movement has morphed into the most authoritarian philosophy in America. The most glaring example of course is the multitrillion-dollar cap-and-trade anti-global warming scheme that would mandate an entire restructuring of our industrial economy. The latest rage among the more radical environmental groups is to encourage the government to monitor and ration every individual’s carbon footprint — how much you eat, drive, fly, heat, air condition, throw away and so on.
If there is anything to be learned from the recent string of bubbles, it may be that surplus investment capital, now floating round the world in cyberspace, is always looking for a speculative home and that as one bubble bursts, the fund managers desperately seek out a replacement. Will we see a gathering flock to carbon trading, windmills, biofuels and other renewables driven largely by the legislators?
Sadly, it is clear that the planning profession has too often lost its way by allowing itself to become captured by ideologues, less important aesthetic issues and those (both commercial interests and existing home owners) determined to exclude others from their rights to ownership and community participation.