A new report from the University of Calgary shows Alberta is losing about $7.2 billion each year in government revenues because of a lack of pipeline capacity and limited access to markets for heavy oil. The university’s School of Public Policy produced the study that shows Alberta is losing about $6.60 on every barrel of […]

Health care and early social supports are failing victims of childhood abuse who go on to comprise a large portion of the city’s chronic homeless population, says a University of Calgary study. A survey of 300 of those who sleep on the streets or in Calgary emergency shelters found those people are five times more […]

Alberta’s budgets may appear bigger nowadays than in years past, but that’s not necessarily a sign that more of your tax dollars are being spent. That’s according to a new report, co-authored by Ron Kneebone and Margarita Wilkins of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, which examines changes to the province’s accounting conventions […]

What’s the price of oil these days? Calgary is one of the few places where you can ask someone that question and reasonably expect them to know the answer. As a city, we follow the ups and downs of this particular commodity with an intensity that borders on obsessive. Our collective mood rises and falls […]

Canadian provinces should spend more on social services instead of health care in order to improve the overall health of the population, new Canadian research suggests. While health spending increases seem like a common sense approach, the study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) on Monday suggests that increased social spending is more […]

High-wage workers are under-covered by Canada’s employment insurance system and should have a voluntary top-up option, according to a new research paper from the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. And, if the federal government won’t do it, provinces like Alberta should consider creating their own parallel EI system, say the paper’s authors. That’s […]

Alberta may have lost the policy battle over the Energy East pipeline, but there’s one more battle to fight: the huge jurisdictional overreach by the National Energy Board’s addition of upstream emissions to the review of TransCanada pipeline’s application. Changing the rules in the middle of the game was the straw that broke the camel’s […]

Andrei Sulzenko is a former Canadian trade negotiator and is currently an Executive Fellow at the School of Public Policy, University of Calgary. Well, the gloves are off – and maybe the helmets too. Only this time it’s not hockey. It’s trade negotiations. Let’s hope our Canadian players are good at both games. Last month, […]

Only one in three Albertans with disabilities are benefiting from the federal disability tax credit, according to a report from the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. People with disabilities often face hidden (or non-itemizable) costs, and barriers that can lead to lower income and employment rates. The tax credit is designed to support persons with disabilities by […]