Swift-Boating the carbon tax

The bed having been made by the NDP, the Prime Minister not only takes it but moves in and changes the locks. All summer the NDP’s axe-the-tax campaign against the BC carbon tax has played on a classic conservative anti-tax theme (to the dismay of yours truly). The BC election is not until May 2009, and who knows what will […]

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“A steady invisible hand”

Asked by the Globe what the “ballot question” should be for the upcoming election, Tasha Kheiriddin, Quebec Director of the Fraser Institute says: “It should be all about green – money, that is. With the price of oil dropping, inflation creeping up and the auto sector in tough times, which party can provide the steadiest invisible hand for our economy?” […]

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Tilting at Economic Freedom

The Fraser Institute released its annual report on economic freedom yesterday. As always, the report attempts to establish a causal relationship between its measure of “economic freedom” and economic growth. The first major problem is that economic growth is clearly driven by other more important factors. With respect to Newfoundland and Labrador, the Fraser Institute acknowledges, “the province has benefited […]

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Mike Harris Blames the Victim … Again

Lightning should surely have struck the offices of the Fraser Institute last week when it released a study co-authored by Mike Harris, the former Ontario Premier, on the supposedly declining state of the City of Toronto.   The study itself (“Is Toronto in Decline?”, available at http://www.fraserinstitute.org/researchandpublications/publications/5696.aspx)  was nothing to write home about.  It consisted solely of rehashed results from […]

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Tales from the Mouth of the Fraser: Unfounded Liabilities

The Fraser Institute says the debt monster is gonna getcha: The study, Canadian Government Debt 2008, shows that federal, provincial, and local governments have accumulated $791.2 billion in direct debt and more than $2.4 trillion in total government liabilities. Total liabilities include direct debt and programs that the government has committed to provide such as Old Age Security and Medicare […]

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Raising Alberta’s Royalties

Last week, the Royalty Review Panel recommended that Alberta raise its oil and gas royalties. Its 100-page final report, Our Fair Share, has generated healthy debate on a critically important subject. The basic message follows: Albertans do not receive their fair share from energy development and they have not, in fact, been receiving their fair share for quite some time. […]

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The Fraser Institute’s Job-Creation Strategy: Cut Wages

The Fraser Institute’s latest study of North American labour markets intends to demonstrate that public-sector employment, minimum wages, unionization, and labour laws that facilitate collective bargaining damage labour-market performance. However, its “Index of Labour Market Performance” measures the quantity of jobs with almost no regard for quality. Even this questionable index is not negatively correlated with the policies criticized by […]

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Stopping TILMA on the East Coast

The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies has been calling for the Atlantic provinces to join TILMA. Yesterday, I discussed this proposal with the Halifax ChronicleHerald’s editorial board. The following report was printed in today’s edition. Also yesterday, the CCPA posted a paper based on my submission to the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly’s Standing Committee on the Economy. Published: 2007-07-12 Labour group […]

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TILMA and Investor Rights

In this month’s Fraser Forum, Robert Knox attacks the critics of TILMA. Knox, who was one of the folks leading the charge for the Agreement on Internal Trade, mostly takes aim at legal interpretations by Ellen Gould and Steven Shrybman that contemplate areas where TILMA’s broad scope could lead to perverse rulings by trade panels. His counter-argument goes something like […]

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Consumer Tax Index

Crawl Across the Ocean, which has infrequent but excellent posts, features an amusing and accurate critique of the Fraser Institute’s “Consumer Tax Index.”   MORE (April 29): In particular, this critique points out that the political right defines “essential” very narrowly when measuring poverty or railing about taxes, but very broadly when limiting the right to strike.

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Policy Conference Presentations

The presentations from the Ottawa Economics Association’s 2007 Policy Conference are now available online. They include a fascinating exposition on China’s manufacturing sector, a business perspective on Canadian manufacturing, Buzz Hargrove on the Canadian economy, and the Fraser Institute’s take on global warming.

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Back-of-Envelope Math on R&D

To flesh out the cost-effectiveness issue outlined below, consider the following figures. McKenzie estimates that a 10% decrease in the cost of R&D due to a tax credit increases R&D by 2% in the short term and 7% in the long term, but that a 10% decrease in the effective tax rate on production increases R&D by 3% in the […]

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Research and Development

This afternoon, I attended Kenneth McKenzie’s presentation at Industry Canada on “Taxes, R&D and Enterprise Formation.” To a large extent, it was based on his C. D. Howe Institute Commentary. His main message is that governments seeking to promote R&D can “push” by reducing its cost through incentives (i.e. subsidies) or “pull” by increasing its benefit through lower taxes on […]

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Denial on the eve of IPCC 4

The Guardian has an edgier take on the story posted earlier today. Check out the reference in last paragraph regarding a certain Canadian think tank. Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study Friday February 2, 2007 The Guardian Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to […]

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Who’s still cool on global warming?

A good article in the Toronto Star profiling the climate change denial industry. Funny how they want conclusive proof of harms caused by human-induced global warming, but seem to have no problem proffering dubious evidence themselves. It is also curious how these “free thinkers” come up with the exact same positions and arguments. Like an old African proverb: you cannot […]

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Softwood capitulation: Not the final word

One more for the softwood file: a commentary by Gordon Gibson from the Globe last week. Gibson regularly flies the flag of the ultra-right wing Fraser Institute but I generally find him to be an interesting commentator on many issues, even when I disagree with him. Perhaps it is because he has real life experience in politics, unlike the ideological […]

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From the mouth of the Fraser

Today’s report from the Fraser Institute finds that, surprise surprise, health care spending is unsustainable. Or at least that is what the Fraser’s funders want you to think. I find the Fraser Institute has an excellent knack for putting out media-friendly goodies that on closer examination do not stand up to scrutiny. But the media are generally not that interested […]

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Fear of Sharing

All of this equalization talk has Preston Manning worried. While Alberta Premier Ralph Klein would have just told the rest of us to keep our grubby hands off Alberta’s wealth, Manning and his co-author Fred Kerr take 1200 words to explain to us that Alberta is already sharing as much as it can. Let’s take a walk though their oped […]

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It’s Tax Freedom Day

Call me a curmudgeon, but I am not celebrating the Fraser Institute's Tax Freedom Day. This notion does not deserve any media attention, but the fact that it does suggests it is a clever and successful gimmick. That is about the nicest thing that can be said about TFD. It grossly exaggerates the amount of taxes people pay in a […]

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