The Canadian public overwhelming believes that government’s first priority is to protect their health, safety and the environment. They do not trust corporations to regulate themselves, believing that they will privilege profits over safety. (See the CCPA report “Canada’s Regulatory Obstacle Course” for polling data.) Only after a major disaster…
Read more
Both Canada and Norway are major petroleum exporters, producing roughly the same volume of oil and gas. Conservative governments hold power in both countries—Canada’s in majority and Norway’s as part of a centre-right coalition. Despite these similarities, the governments are worlds apart when it comes to climate change. Carbon emissions…
Read more
Since management of Canada’s energy resources has become a major economic issue in this election, I thought it would be useful to review how Norway and Canada—both major producers and exporters of petroleum (oil and gas)—go about it. Spoiler alert: Norway manages its energy resources much better than we do….
Read more
At a time when the federal government was cutting 3,100 full time positions at the Canada Revenue Agency (including highly trained auditors working on international tax evasion), CRA was given an additional $13.4 million to conduct political super audits on 60 charities. By and large these audits have targeted organizations…
Read more
My report, Willful Blindness?, released today, summarizes the regulatory failures behind the Lac-Mégantic tragedy. The federal government has so far not acknowledged any culpability or responsibility for the accident. On the contrary, the Minister has blamed the accident on the negligence of individuals and not on gaps in the regulatory…
Read more
The federal government has been attempting to silence NGOs with charitable status from speaking out on issues that matter to all Canadians. This initiative to intimidate and otherwise silence voices that challenge its policies—goes to the heart of Canadian democracy. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the Conservative government is attempting to…
Read more
The decade long petro-boom has caused major distortions in the Canadian economy, and has driven growing interpersonal and interprovincial inequality. The flood of petro-revenue into Alberta— the source and destination of the vast majority of petro-wealth— pushed up its per capita GDP from 10% above the Canadian average in 2002,…
Read more
One of goals in my paper, The Petro-Path Not Taken, was to compare Norway and Canada-Alberta’s record in distributing petroleum wealth amongst persons and amongst provinces. Norway has been very effective in distributing oil wealth amongst it regions and its population. Its level of income inequality is one of the…
Read more
The 2012 federal budget, which purports to deliver “jobs, growth and long-term prosperity,” does nothing of the kind. Make no mistake, this is an austerity budget— spending cuts outpace new measures 7:1— that worsens income and inter-generational inequality, destroys jobs and locks in a slow growth, high unemployment future. Let’s…
Read more
Bruce Campbell and Armine Yalnizyan Are unions more of a problem than a solution today? Anti-union sentiment has accelerated since the global crisis of 2008 brought economies to their knees and left public finances in a mess. Widespread frustration with fragile growth and soaring debt has been channeled towards unions,…
Read more