By: Brian Livingston A key decision is looming for the federal government in the next few weeks. The feds have said many times that the environment and the economy both matter, and that one does not have to choose one to the exclusion of the other. The upcoming decision as to whether to approve or […]
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised that his federal government will sit down with the provinces within 90 days of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) Conference of the Parties (COP), which took place in Paris at the end of 2015. The goal being to have the federal and provincial governments discuss […]
Risk. It’s everywhere. When central banks and governments around the world hold interest rates to artificially low levels, the world’s financial marketplace is being distorted. This distortion should bring benefits, primarily by making it easy for businesses to borrow funds for purposes of investment, and business investment stimulates national economies. A low interest rate environment […]
For decades, downtown has been the location of choice for corporate Calgary and each weekday some 345,000 Calgarians stream in and out of the core. The majority of these people are commuters on their way to work, arriving by automobile (54.4 per cent), transit (34.5 per cent), and those close enough to walk (9.4 per […]
A prominent and perhaps defining issue in the federal election was the Liberal promise to run deficits of about $10 billion for three years to invest in infrastructure and spur tepid economic growth across the nation. The Conservative government, running on a promise of modest budget surpluses for the foreseeable future, characterized the Liberal plan […]
The health of a city and the health of its residents are inextricably linked. As Canada continues to urbanize — with nearly two-thirds of us living in cities — there is dramatic association between urban sprawl and chronic diseases such as obesity. As the Ontario College of Family Physicians says: “Sprawl impacts negatively on well-being […]
I came across a 2014 School of Public Policy study[1] on the costs of caring for adults with autism when I was dealing with yet another crisis involving my 60-year-old autistic sister. The study's authors, Carolyn Dudley and Herb Emery, created needs maps for several model individuals with autism and estimated the cost of caregiver […]
On Monday, the School of Public policy posted a blog piece (see below) that I put together on the aggregate value of Volkswagen’s excess emissions resulting from the diesel engine scandal (in which VW used a “defeat device” to cheat the EPA’s emissions testing). Shortly after that piece was posted, Dr. Keith Stewart (head of […]
With the election of Justin Trudeau and the Liberals much of the policy framework that has defined the last decade or so of Stephen Harper’s government will be subjected to close scrutiny, none more so than Canada’s China policy. Despite the presence in Toronto of two (now four) pandas happily munching their way through half […]