Late last month, Prime Minister Mark Carney stood outside one of Canada’s most recognizable addresses and announced what much of Ottawa has been waiting a decade to hear: 24 Sussex Drive will be restored. A national design-and-build competition, open exclusively to Canadian firms, will determine what the next version of the official residence looks like. […]

The problems afflicting the federal-provincial governments’ new childcare system were all very predictable. The question now is what can or should they do to fix it.   The objectives of the “Canada-wide Early Learning and Childcare” program were worthy – charge only $10 a day so that more families, particularly low-income families could access it; thereby […]

There has been considerable anecdotal evidence that Canadian manufacturers have been through a rough few years, with an uncompetitive economic environment of high taxes, intrusive regulatory demands, a sluggish economy and labour market disruptions. The tariffs imposed by the Trump administration over the past year worsened the situation. A KPMG Manufacturing survey published last week […]

The rich need to pay their fair share.  That’s a refrain we often hear from the progressive side of the aisle, with politicians in both Canada and the United States arguing that more taxes need to be piled on top of the wealthy, implying that somehow they don’t contribute enough to our social safety net.  […]

It’s time to give credit where credit is due. In the shadow of major defence commitments to the tune of billions of dollars made on the heels of this week’s NATO Summit, Prime Minister Mark Carney also managed to upend the Senate selection process. In a nod to the Davos-esque language that is fast becoming […]

The topic of pipelines is all the rage in policy circles of late, all because there appears to have been some recent progress on the Alberta to B.C. Coast pipeline plans, albeit via a non-optimal route. Before anyone gets too excited, there remain many roadblocks to this project, virtually all of them self-inflicted. Commentators have […]

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is finally getting a pipeline. But, after making concession after concession, this doesn’t feel like the pipeline win that Albertans and Canadians who support energy development have been longing for. First of all, Smith agreed to jack up industrial carbon taxes in pursuit of a deal with Prime Minister Mark Carney, […]

On this Canada Day there is an underappreciated and growing risk to our democracy – the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Its use by judges wedded to “judicial activism” is undermining the ability of our governments to govern and their accountability to the voters who elect them.   Politicians may be held in low esteem these […]

School is out, Parliament has risen, and it feels like summer in the nation’s capital. For Mark Carney, Pierre Poilievre, and Avi Lewis, the next three months are less a recess than a reckoning. Each faces a different set of problems. None has much margin for error. Prime Minister Mark Carney The pitch that elected […]

For more than 100 years, Ontario was the engine that drove Canadian economic growth. When Canada’s social programs were first created – think Medicare, for example – it was Ontario taxpayers that largely paid the federal government’s portion of the bill.  Today, that’s no longer the case.  Alberta has long since surpassed Ontario as the […]