Category: Opinion

If we want Canada to add up to more than the sum of its parts, we need to get our regional house in order By Robert Roach Senior Fellow Atlantic Institute for Market Studies Canada is a big and diverse place. People, power, economic opportunities, pubic policy priorities, language and cultural nuances are not evenly…

One spill is too many but pipelines are much safer than rail for transporting oil By Kenneth P. Green, Elmira Aliakbari and Ashley Stedman The Fraser Institute State regulators in Nebraska recently approved the Keystone XL pipeline, ending nine years of regulatory and political limbo across multiple jurisdictions. TransCanada Corp. can now build its pipeline.…

Marijuana legalization opponents say long-term health and social costs will be significant, through things like car accidents, and brain and lung damage By Lee Harding Research Associate Frontier Centre for Public Policy Legalize and tax marijuana and the budget will balance itself. Marijuana advocates from stoners to recreational users to the prime minister have tried…

Non-believers overwhelmingly believe every religious community in Canada, especially Muslims and evangelical Christians, hurt the country By Ray Pennings Co-founder and executive vice-president Cardus Throughout autumn, the soup of our multicultural society has almost boiled over with questions about secularism and religion – of what is and isn’t allowed in contemporary public and common Canadian…

The Alberta premier really shouldn’t be touted as a role model for young girls By Joseph Quesnel Contributor Troy Media Alberta Premier Rachel Notley must apologize to all Albertans for engaging in sexist gender stereotyping in the legislature. Instead, she’s taking a page from the state representative who seemed to think it best to make…

Norm Baker was the founding chairman of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. He was a dirt-poor farm kid who joined the navy during WWII. After the war, he came home and learned to be an electrician, eventually starting his own company, Baker’s Electric, which at one point employed more than 100 people. Baker had a self-proclaimed…

JOURNALISTIC “HIGH-PUR-BUH-LEE” Graham Thomson and the Calgary Herald (Sept 12) say that Alberta’s coal-fired electrical plants played a role in the recent hurricanes in the United States. They claim: “Climate change is… making hurricanes like Irma more powerful and more destructive.” The paper also affirms: “There is a connection between burning coal in Alberta… and [Hurricane] Irma.”…

Businesses exist because people have invested in productive assets like land, buildings, machines, and employees. These businesses provide goods and services that are voluntarily purchased or in other words things that people need or want. Taxes decrease the productivity of businesses which means less product, less employment, less income to buy other products. Taxes decrease…

It’s a conceit of every generation that they alone are free from poor judgments, intellectual shortcomings and historical myopia By Brian Lee Crowley Managing director Macdonald-Laurier Institute Should efforts to exile Canada’s pre-eminent founder, Sir John A. Macdonald, to the scrapheap of history be allowed to succeed? No. Anger at monuments and memorials misunderstands our…

Mark Kingwell is vexed by the failure of democracy to silence the speech of those he disagrees with By Gerry Bowler Senior Fellow Frontier Centre for Public Policy Mark Kingwell is what is commonly called an intellectual social critic. He has an impressive list of advanced degrees and has published books on difficult topics such…

Recently, a woman on Facebook asked: “Who can we trust with public money?” She’d just learned that Brian Jean is responsible for a $322,000 deficit in the Wildrose caucus budget. She’d also learned that prior to the disclosure, Wildrose MLAs had sought clarification and information about that budget, only to be rebuffed or stonewalled. Many…

Reading the news, it’s looking more likely that the government is going to be using taxpayer money to clean up old Alberta oil wells. So, oil companies pump out huge profits and then leave the mess for the taxpayer to clean up? What other industries or businesses are allowed to do this?  None. Alberta’s Orphan…

It would be nice if the Alberta Premier could practice in Alberta what she preaches in Washington By Derek James From, Staff lawyer Canadian Constitution Foundation CALGARY, Alta. / Troy Media/ – Alberta is all abuzz. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley is back from her trip to Washington. She was there to advocate for the province’s economic…