In the last Ontario budget Premier Kathleen Wynne brought free tuition to lowish-income students and in an interview lamented that she couldn’t make it free for everyone. I beg to…
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In my never-ending campaign to épater les bourgeois (aka the commenters on the Globe’s comments page), my latest column takes aim at one of their favourite policy prescriptions: a guaranteed…
Incoming Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has confirmed her partyt’s intention to raise the minimum wage in the province to $15/hr. Like many things this sounds good but in fact isn’t,…
Is Aboriginal Canada, mired in poverty and poor education, nonetheless opposed in principle to doing anything to change their circumstances? You might be forgiven for thinking this if you read…
To hear the critics talk, inequality is growing in Canada because of a mean-spirited effort by governments to reduce the tax burden and leaving the most vulnerable to fend for…
My latest musings for the Globe/ROB’s Economy Lab revolves around the context and significance of the year’s most important budget: Quebec’s. After years of failed attempts, the new Liberal government…
Lost in the angst about income inequality is the fundamental point that the poor’s purchasing power is increasing all the time. Innovation is the chief explanation, as I lay out…
The Parliamentary Budget Officer recently released a paper explaining why it doesn’t actually cost the government anything when civil servants take sick leave. His conclusion was, IMHO, so bizarre that…
In the latest of my seemingly endless screeds for the Ottawa Citizen and other PostMedia newspapers today I mine the D-Day invasion and the West’s success in the Cold War…
In my latest column for the Globe’s ROB I make the case that the newly announced agreement between Ottawa and the First Nations over education could do more than advance…