Blog

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 […]