Manitobans can only hope First Alberta, then Saskatchewan, but will Manitoba follow? Next year will be the final year for the Saskatchewan government to retail alcohol – nearly 100 years after it began. This history demonstrates how long government keeps its hands on something once it starts, but also how an incremental approach can allow…
Drug overdose deaths approaching 2,000 annually Does passive policing and harm reduction improve health and safety? Vancouver is a living, breathing example to the contrary – or perhaps more like a dying, gasping person. In his film Vancouver is Dying, Aaron Gunn demonstrates the rot of addiction and criminality that is destroying one of Canada’s…
The opportunity costs of not exporting natural gas and oil remain enormous Manitoba premier Heather Stefanson finally voiced support for more energy exports out of Hudson Bay. That is excellent news because the potential is real and the reasons to refuse are illusory. “We are looking at liquefied natural gas, primarily,” Stefanson told reporters recently.…
Increases to the Marginal Effective Tax Rate taking even more of your hard-earned money
New Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is correct when he says governments discourage work with taxes and clawbacks. The Marginal Effective Tax Rate (METR) measures what government takes from each new dollar earned in taxes and clawbacks of income-related government benefits. In his leadership acceptance speech and an August 19 video called “Make work pay,” Poilievre…
The only options left for Canadians are a tax revolt, voting out the government, or a job working for the feds
Why work for yourself when taxpayers can pay you instead? In the past seven years, more Manitobans than ever have chosen the job security and benefits of federal employment, while the self-employed have begun to vanish. Statistics Canada snapshots show the most stunning growth of total salaries in one category of worker: federal government public…
He scaled back the public service. Will his successor be able to maintain that momentum?
Former Manitoba premier Brian Pallister might best be remembered as the Grinch who stole the 2020 Christmas, forbidding citizens from in-person shopping and gathering for the holiday. However, he has another legacy, more like the Canadian Tire Christmas commercials that said, “Give like Santa, save like Scrooge.” Pallister was both Santa and Scrooge by restraining…
Elite influence is no myth
Do you believe “Big events (wars, recessions, elections) are controlled by small groups secretly working against the rest of us”? Abacus surveyed 1,500 Canadians on that question, and 44 per cent agreed. However, the pollster characterized those who “believe dangerous contrarian theories” and “mistrust what media report and what governments say” as “a poison affecting…
Supply chain problems, aging demographics and the push for net zero will drive up government spending
The era of low interest rates and inflation has ended, and now is the time for governments to show restraint. But recent precedent suggests that’s unlikely. Canadian year-over-year inflation hit 7.7 per cent in May, the highest in nearly 40 years, and I predict it will go still higher. Ten years ago, Parliamentary Budget Officer…
COVID will go around forever, endlessly mutating but relatively benign
If public health, a vibrant economy and preserving our constitutional freedoms were the goal, then Canadian institutions have gotten nearly everything wrong when it comes to COVID-19. Government policy, academia and mainstream media have fallen to COVID-ism, a condition where the COVID narrative formed in March 2020 must be maintained at all costs and dissent…
More than 100 years after H.G. Wells forecast big changes in the world order, the tide is turning
Democratic capitalism is a remarkably empowering and wealth-generating structure. Although wealth is not a zero-sum game, power may well be. In his 2011 book The Fruits of Graft: Great Depressions Then and Now, Wayne Jett explores how certain elitists have actively sought to undermine the masses and usurp political and economic power for themselves. In H.G.…