Well, Ed Stelmach and his government have come up with some doozies for bad ideas. Most of them are clearly those espoused by “red tories”, people who believe in growing government for the sake of government… Stupid Idea #1 High Speed Rail Link I admit that driving the QE2 (Highway 2) between Calgary and Edmonton …
Category Archive: Provincial
Apr 30
Proof that Equalization is Broken
M. Charest is going to cut taxes in Quebec based on increased monies from Ottawa. Quebec currently spends more per capita on programs than any other province, with the possible exception of Alberta (where the government never saw a dime it wouldn’t spend). And the federal government continues to pour money into Quebec to ostensibly …
Mar 20
Why I don’t like the 2007 Federal Budget
I am not a big fan of the federal budget that Mr. Flaherty presented on Monday. It is not libertarian enough for my tastes. The massive increases in spending, even if most of them are transfers to the provinces, simply grow the influence “the state” has over the lives of individual Canadians. There was clearly …
Nov 01
The Quebec Question and Demographics
Demographics are very important when analyzing the demographics of Canada. Currently, Quebec constitutes approximately 23.3% of the Canadian population. More importantly, people who claim their mother tongue is French constitute 20.5% of the Canadian population, according to Statistics Canada (estimates for 2005). The problem with recognizing Quebec as a “nation” within Canada is that in …
Sep 27
Why Alberta doesn’t need school boards
The Calgary Board of Education is appealling a decision by the courts in Alberta. In this decision, the Court ruled that two formerly private schools that have a religious affiliation may become publicly funded charter schools under the Palliser Board of Education (Lethbridge Region). This comes after the CBE denied the request of these schools …
Jul 28
Reforming Welfare
The Economist has a very good summary of the effect the “Welfare to Work” program put in place by Bill Clinton in 1996 has had on welfare claims in the US. Tough love works Canadian provinces would be well advised to follow this lead, and use both sanctions and incentives to get people into the …
Jul 10
What the Kyoto fans don’t understand
Jeffrey Simpson misses the boat AGAIN. Time to get our head out of the oil sands The problem of climate change, assuming it is happening and is caused by anthropogenic emissions to the environment, is that it is too big a problem for us to do anything about. To stop the increasing CO2 content of …
Jul 10
Why Lougheed is wrong
Jeffrey Simpson quotes former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed on the oil sands projects: Call a halt, Albertans The government should NOT interfere in the workings of the market.
Jun 26
McGuinty almost got it right this time…
Dalton McGuinty has a good idea but doesn’t get the implementation right: McGuinty floats using GST to fix fiscal imbalance McGuinty wants Ottawa to collect the GST and then send a bunch of the money to the provinces for programs. I have a better idea. Ottawa should CUT the GST (or even better, income taxes), …
Jan 27
Fixing the Fiscal Imbalance
Maxime Bernier, the newly elected Conservative MP from Beauce (south of Quebec City), mused Wednesday about how the federal government could fix the fiscal imbalance. He stated that: Or the surplus could be put back into Canadians’ pockets by reducing taxes, so that provinces would then have more taxation room, to get the sums they …