On Monday, April 12, Alberta’s premier posted on social media his reaction to the protests that visited the steps of the Legislature and surrounded the proscribed ground of GraceLife Church (the premier’s words are posted here). Estimates put the crowd at the...
There is little doubt that the condition of Indigenous people is desperate in Canada, especially for those living in the 600 or so small isolated First Nations communities. Most Canadians know some facts about the quality of lives of the people in these communities,...
Governments are killing real jobs and conning us about “millions of good green jobs.” “Fool me once,” Stephen King wrote, “shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.” His adage certainly applies to the myth (and fake math) of...
For several decades, Canada was the focus of a global attack on its natural resource economy, with its oilsands deposits (the world’s third-largest oil reserve) ranked as “public enemy number one.” Though only a tiny contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions...
There is some good news for mining in Manitoba, but the province needs to reform its mining policies for the sector to thrive. Despite some progress over the years, this province still has a hostile climate for investment and this needs to change. Vale recently...
The federal government has spotted another pretext to increase its scope: subsidized child care. Despite knowing economic lockdowns have caused massive job losses, Ottawa officials argue that unaffordable child care impedes women from returning to the workforce....
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.
“We favour any and every energy source,” he said in an interview. “We do not believe in this artificial game that the radicals play of pitting the so-called bad energy versus good energy. All energy, when prices are as high as they are, which is such a critical resource and the lifeblood of a nation’s economy and the survival of people, is good energy as far as we are concerned.”
Similar to the municipal level, the effective use of public money by first nations requires transparent governments responsible to their own citizens, who pay a significant part of their cost by taxing themselves. It also requires a vigorous civil society in which most people are self-supporting, own property and are not dependent on government to do everything for them.
Why the urban catastrophists are wrong and society will adapt to higher oil prices through technology and natural changes in behaviour.
Evaluating Saskatchewan’s 2008 Housing Affordability Task Force Report.
In “Escaping the poverty trap: from public housing to home ownership,” Rebecca Walberg writes that “The last thing a Canadian city should be doing now is building or buying new public housing units.” Instead, Walberg, Social Policy Analyst for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, advances policy ideas that would encourage home ownership and rent vouchers instead of government housing and rent control.