FRASER INSTITUTE FAIL

Nearly half of federal budget deficit during pandemic not related to COVID spending

“You could argue that part of the reason for the larger deficit was that federal revenues were down during the pandemic and spending up”

Bryan Passifiume - National Post

A health care worker guides a woman wearing a mask outside of St. Michaels Hospital in Toronto during the COVID-19 pandemic.© Provided by National Post

As Canada set new records for government spending during COVID-19, a newly released report suggests nearly half of the spending was not related to the pandemic.

Authored by Lakehead University Economics Professor Livio Di Matteo for the Fraser Institute, the paper — entitled Storm Without End: The Fiscal Impact of COVID-19 on Canada and the Provinces — says federal spending grew by 73 per cent in 2020/21 to $644.2 billion.

That number declined into the next fiscal year, falling 21 per cent to $508.2 billion in 2021/22.

In 2020/21, the report says, the federal government debt grew by around 41 per cent, and 12.4 per cent, to $1.3 trillion, in 2021/22.

“You could argue that part of the reason for the larger deficit was that federal revenues were down during the pandemic and spending up,” Di Matteo said.

“But if you look at the federal revenue performance, it was down about 5 per cent in 2021, but started to rebound quite dramatically.”

Estimates for 2021/22, which Di Matteo said have yet to be finalized, suggest a 17 per cent increase.

Health spending saw an estimated increase of nearly 13 per cent between 2019 and 2020, the report reads — a rate of increase Di Matteo said was over triple the established health care spending growth rate since 2015, and a boost not seen in over three decades.

During the pandemic, around 60 per cent of the federal budget deficit was directly related to the pandemic, largely both federal health spending and related transfers to the provinces, as well as income support programs.

This, the report indicates, suggests a permanent, long-term spending increase.

Projections released late last year by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CHI) suggested the spike in pandemic health spending — expected to exceed $308 billion by the end of 2021 — could put hamper efforts by provinces to rebuild their health care networks post-COVID.

Dr. Katharine Smart, 

president of the Canadian Medical Association, told The Canadian Press in November that provincial health care systems haven’t kept up with these historic increases in health spending, comparing the problem as an out-of-control freight train.

But what impact does this have on Canada’s economic future?

A looming longer-term consequence, he said, is the impact on the federal debt.

“You’re looking at a debt to GDP ratio going from about 33 to 50 per cent, and for the time being a lot of that is locked in at relatively low interest rates,” he said.

But as that debt starts to turn over and new debt accrues, that could lead to higher interest rates and a subsequent increased cost in servicing that debt.

While a great many factors go into a rise in inflation, the increased spending is certainly having an impact, Di Matteo said.

“Inflation is also a function of the supply chain disruptions, the w ar in Ukraine and u ltra-low interest rates still present, so that’s a complicated picture,” he said.

THE FRASER INSTITUTE IS A BIG BUSINESS RIGHT WING THINK TANK LIKE THE CATO INSTITUTE IN THE U$A

CANADA

Child-benefits Spending Reduces for Lower-income Families: study

The federal government has shifted the share of overall spending on child benefits away from lower-income families to middle and upper-income families to an even greater degree than previously thought, finds a new study published today by the Fraser Institute.

The Fraser Institute is an RIGHT WING independent Canadian public policy research and educational organization that studies effects of government policies. AND LIKE ITS COUNTERPART IN THE USA, THE CATO INSTITUTE, IT PROMOTES LESS GOVT REGULATION OF CORPORATIONS

“While the federal government often claims that child benefits go to Canadian families who need the money the most, the shift in overall spending tells a different story,” said Jason Clemens, executive vice-president of the Fraser Institute and co-author of Adjusting for the Canada Child Benefit’s Tax-Free Status.

In 2016, the federal government replaced two child-benefit programs with the Canada Child Benefit (CCB), which provides tax-free benefits to eligible families with children under the age of 18.

The study, based on data from Statistics Canada, measures the shifts in the share of child-benefit spending due to this change — although unlike previous analyses, this study accounts for the tax-free status of CCB payments (most other government income transfers are taxable).

Specifically, the elimination of the previous two programs and their replacement with the CCB — coupled with a recognition of the CCB’s tax-free status — results in the share of total child-benefit spending on families with incomes less than $60,000 declining from 42.9 percent under the previous two programs to 29.7 per cent.

Related video: Study: It now costs Americans about $310,000 to raise a child
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At the same time, the share of total child-benefit spending on families with incomes between $60,000 and $180,000 increased from 49.2 percent to 66.8 percent.

While the share of total child-benefit spending on families with incomes above $180,000 declined from 7.9 percent to 3.5 percent.

“At a time when Ottawa is running deficits with no end in sight, the CCB is yet another poorly targeted federal program,” Clemens said.

Jenna, a single mother, resident of Milton said that she was dependent on government support to take care of her child, but said that over time the amount received for child-benefits seems to have reduced.

“Especially for single mothers like me, the child-benefits should only be increasing rather than decreasing in real terms”, she said.

Shazia Nazir, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Milton Reporter, Milton Reporter

Right Wing Environmentalists

Ontario faces major decisions as future of power grid outlined

Currently, Ontario has a maximum capacity of about 30,000 megawatts, of which about 49 per cent is nuclear, 25 per cent is hydro, 17 per cent is coal, seven per cent is gas, and two per cent comes from other emerging energy technologies, such as wind power. Now, the province must decide what to build for a stable, self-reliant future. Hydro power is clean and economical but its dependence on weather can be a negative. Experts also say the province has maxed out most of its potential and can only make moderate gains in the future through small projects. Coal is linked to environmental and health problems -- McGuinty has promised to scrap Ontario's four coal-powered plants by 2009 -- and gas, though reliable, can be an exceedingly expensive option, given its constantly changing price. That leaves nuclear and green power -- not to mention a heated debate about which is the better option.

Duncan won't listen to 'Neanderthals'
Ontario has no plans to listen to "Neanderthals" who want the province to keep its coal-burning power plants operating, even if that's what a report being prepared for the government recommends, says Energy Minister Dwight Duncan. Duncan's resistance to coal is a mistake, argues Energy Probe executive director Tom Adams.Adams wants the province to keep at least two units at its Lambton station, south of Sarnia in southern Ontario, which rank fourth and ninth out of 403 in the report's list of the cleanest plants on the continent.

Toronto Star Editorial: New reactors vital for hydro system
Unless ways can be found to burn coal cleanly, like it or not, nuclear power will inevitably remain an essential part of the mix. It is clean, emissions free, and despite the breakdowns and recurring problems at the Pickering, Darlington and Bruce facilities, it has proven to be an affordable and, by and large, a reliable energy source. Even with their problems, nuclear plants generate about 50 per cent of all the province's electricity.

So yes Virginia you can be a right wing pro-capitalist environmentalist as Energy Probe and its associates prove *(see links ).


In Ontario Energy Probe is a right wing pro coal, pro P3, anti-union, environmental think tank. It is associated with other right wing think tanks like Probe International, the influential right wing Donner Foundation
and the Fraser Institute.

Energy Probe deliberately modeled itself on the public policy advocacy group Pollution Probe, which is a real public interest foundation of business, unions, non-government agencies, scientists and research councils, the public and government.

Energy Probe is a consumer and environmental research team, active in the fight against nuclear power, and dedicated to resource conservation, economic efficiency, and effective utility regulation.

They proclaim themselves anti-nuke, they are also critical of natural gas fired electrical plants. Leaving them to be promoters of King Coal.

Toronto: The debate over coal-fired power stations is sure to heat up after a report saying they aren't as big a polluter as originally thought.

In fact, a report by Energy Probe says two of the units are among the cleanest in North America.

Units three and four at the Lambton generating station near Sarnia rank in the top 10 cleanest among 403 coal generation units in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

Energy Probes position on coal fired power plants, not surprizingly is the same as that of the Fraser Institute.

Ontario Government in the Dark on Coal Plant Closings: Shutting Down Coal-fired Power Plants will do more Harm than Good

Their criticism of CANDU reactors, the safest nuclear power system in the world, is of course a criticism of government funded and sponsored nuclear power. They aren't opposed to private nuclear power, just government funded and operated nuclear power like CANDU.

They view Alternative energy sources as important but ONLY if it is created by the private sector.

National Post October 8/2004

Wind at our backs by Lawrence Solomon

The windmill entrepreneurs, unable to compete against the government-mandated subsidies, were snuffed out, ending their innovations and replacing their renewable-energy technology with power from remote power utilities that typically relied on burning coal. Wind technology remained extinguished for decades, until the environmental movement resurrected it in the late 1970s. Now wind technology is roaring back, logging the fastest growth of any energy technology in the world.

And they can sound very reasonable in press releases until we uncover their real agenda, the privatization of utilities and public services.

Then they join the rest of the right wing lobbyists, the NCC, Fraser Institute, Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, the C.D. Howe institute, etc. etc. ad naseum, as another voice for the privatization of everything. Making any research, public policy advocacy they do political.

In 2002 one of Energy Probes directors published a book promoting the privatization of water utilites in Canada. The book was a runner up for the Donner Book Prize on Public Policy.

LIQUID ASSETS:
Privatizing and Regulating Canada's Water Utilities
by Elizabeth Brubaker (University of Toronto Centre for Public Management)
Elizabeth Brubaker is the Executive Director of Environment Probe, a Toronto-based environmental think-tank. She is the author of Property Rights in the Defence of Nature.
MORE THAN TWO YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE contaminated water killed seven people and made 2,300 ill in Walkerton, Ontario. "People widely referred to Walkerton as a wake-up call, but many utilities and regulators are still sleeping," says Brubaker. Liquid Assets is a first-class book on an important subject. Intriguing, well-written and meticulously documented, the author provides an authoritative and readable study of privatization of water and waste-water facilities around the world.

Energy Probe-The 10 principles that guide us

The following principles have evolved from our 20-year-long analysis of the root causes of environmental destruction and of the elements of a sustainable society:

1. We work for environmental sustainability by promoting property rights (private or communal), markets, the rule of law, the right to know, accountability through liability, cost and risk internalization, economic efficiency, competition, consumer choice, and an informed public.
2. We strive to eliminate tragedies of the commons¹ by advocating property rights where resources can be exclusive, divisible, and alienable. In these situations, EPRF believes resources are most sustainably managed by the users of the resources themselves. EPRF advocates property rights:
   • to establish and preserve rights and responsibilities;
   • to account fully for social and environmental costs based on the values assigned by the rights holders; and
   • to internalize risks and costs (and to eliminate moral hazards²) in decision making.


3. We favour court actions based on the common law of nuisance, trespass, and riparian rights to empower individuals to protect themselves from environmental harm. We do not believe that governments should have the discretion to negotiate with polluters, or with other parties, to override traditional common law protections.



4. We generally oppose expropriation, which often results in environmental harm. We believe that voluntary agreements more fully internalize costs, protect the environment, and ensure economic efficiency.



5. We argue for the break up of unnatural monopolies, created by political or regulatory decree. Where natural monopolies exist, we advocate regulation that is mandated to protect the interests of consumers.



6. Where property rights cannot easily or affordably be assigned or enforced, we strive to eliminate tragic commons through statutory law and regulation. Although rigorous regulation is often required, regulatory authority must seek to avoid creating barriers to entry, stifling innovation, interrupting the flow of information, and forcing regulated parties to act against their best judgement.



7. We work to ensure the integrity of regulatory systems and the strict enforcement of laws that penalize unauthorized pollution. To eliminate biases and conflicts of interest, and to ensure that public and private sector polluters are treated equally, we advocate independent regulators, who are subject to due process and judicial review, and regulatory processes that require full disclosure of information.



8. We work to establish decentralized decision-making processes and to devolve decision making to the lowest practicable level – that which is closest to the individual.



9. We oppose subsidies to resource use. Where society favours subsidies to ensure social equity, we favour subsidizing resource users with direct payments, untied to the level of consumption, rather than subsidies that lower the apparent cost of the resource.



10. We oppose the socialization of private sector costs and risks through government subsidies and indemnities to the corporate sector. For example, while we approve of private insurance as a way to internalize risks and costs, we oppose government indemnities to resource or financial sectors, particularly if those indemnities protect risk takers and polluters from the risks and costs of their activities.

Energy Probe also runs a so called Consumer Policy Institute. Like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, generic terms like Taxpayer and Consumer are used by the right wing business lobbies to appear as if they are speaking for the public rather than the special interests they really are lobbying for...private sector contol of public services.

Consumer Policy Institute is a division of Energy Probe Research Foundation. Incorporated in 1980, Energy Probe is a federally recognized charitable organization, financially independent of governments and corporations.

EPRF has always promoted development that furthered our social, economic and environmental wellbeing. Some parts of our foundation focus on protecting the environment while respecting our social and economic needs; CPI focuses on our social and economic needs while respecting environmental needs. In today's society, with the communications revolution and trade liberalization eroding the power of regional, national, and international authorities, the influence of individuals and their local communities grows. A concern for our more immediate "social environments" or "human ecology" now accompanies our work to protect the natural environment.

Because the empowerment of individuals and of small communities is so vital to the well-being and stability of this new human ecology, empowerment is a central theme in CPI's work. Equally important to CPI's mission is an understanding that individuals' empowerment can become mere anarchy or oppression if it is not rooted in by a sense of responsibility to each other and to the natural world.

Our recent accomplishments and current projects reflect this conviction.

Health Reform

To protect and promote Canadian Medicare we have proposed a model of publicly funded health allowances or Medical Savings Accounts that finds true efficiencies while maintaining the Canada Health Act's five principles. The thrust of our work is to restore the integrity of the relationship between physicians and their doctors by empowering patients.

Airports

A sale for full market value of Canada's federally-owned airports would yield billions of dollars in immediate revenue for the cash-strapped government, as well as hundreds of millions a year in ongoing tax revenue. But instead of turning airports over to efficient, customer-oriented operators who will lower costs and increase service, the federal government has begun leasing them to local non-profit authorities set up by municipal councils. Consumer Policy Institute's study, Benefitting Consumers and the Economy Through Airport Privatization informs Canadians of the benefits of selling federal airports to the public.

Economic Policy
Transportation

Canada's public transit monopolies, already woefully inadequate and overly expensive, could soon be at the end of their road. By introducing competition to Canada's public transit systems, service would improve and costs would come down. Consumer Policy Institute is working to break up the public transit monopolies and give Canadians access to expanded, affordable service.

Our existing system of taxi regulation increases costs and decreases service, discriminating particularly against the poor and women, who use taxis most, while denying opportunities to immigrants and other new entrants into the labour force. Consumer Policy Institute reforms would reverse these inequities.

Canada's public transit monopolies, already woefully inadequate and overly expensive, could soon be at the end of their road. By introducing competition to Canada's public transit systems, service would improve and costs would come down. Consumer Policy Institute is working to break up the public transit monopolies and give Canadians access to expanded, affordable service.

Groupthink

We sometimes overlook the most obvious connection between deniers, those who deny global warming, those who deny evolution and those who deny the holocaust.

They suffer from the same kind of groupthink and conspiracy theories.

Its not denial they say, it's debate they want, the facts are not irrefutable, there is evidence to the contrary.

For a long time Bradley Smith has tried to present himself as an honest chap, a champion of intellectual freedom simply seeking an "open debate"about the "holocaust controversy [sic]." But this debate is a sham. The so-called holocaust controversy does not exist. It is the invention of a collection of long-time anti-Semites and apologists for Hitler.

On the surface, Holocaust deniers portray themselves as individuals and groups engaged in a legitimate, dispassionate quest for historical knowledge and "truth."

Dressing themselves in pseudo-academic garb, they have adopted the term "revisionism" in order to mask and legitimate their enterprise. After all, the ongoing challenge to and revision of previously accepted historical interpretation is one of the hallmarks of the professional historian's craft.

Of course most holocaust deniers are right wing kooks that even other right wingers disavow or do they? Not so. Once upon a time they had powerful business backers, and in many cases still do today.

Like Robert Welch Jr. who founded the John Birch Society. Today the Birchites focus their criticism on immigration, legal or illegal and the UN. There are many in a variety of right wing movements, like the Minutemen, whose roots go back to the sixties and the World Anti-Bolshevik Movement which gave succour to post WWII fascists.

The right wing is inundated with conspiracy theorists, holocaust deniers and neo-fascists. And ideological differences aside they are part of the 'mainstream' right, they are backed by private business interests and the tactics they have developed over fifty years of lobbying in the United States remain the same.

Because they are effective. Deny that your opponents have evidence, claim something is a theory, not a fact and viola, their views are challenged for there creditability.

Thus the same argumentative tactic used to deny the holocaust is used to deny evolution and used to deny climate change. It is groupthink on the right. And the argumentative style does not change, the subject of the attack does.

And it is always tinged with conspiracy theory, that the scientific or historical facts are being foisted on us because it is consensus reality, consensus of those in power it is not the 'real thing'.

So all the historians that accept the holocaust are establishment historians not 'real' historians. Scientists that accept evolution or global warming are not 'real' scientists.

The only place that a climate change science consensus exists is in what Essex and McKitrick call 'Official Science', the collective voice of governments and other so-called 'science authorities'. But this is not real science.

The Climate Change Deniers have money and powerful connections they have used to discredit their opponents, in this case other scientists and academics. And sometimes do so to end careers, literally terrifying their opponents into silence. Certainly a form of fascism.

"There is a strategy to single out individuals, tarnish them and try to bring the whole of the science into disrepute," he says. "And Kevin [Trenberth] is a likely target." Mann agrees that the scientists behind the upcoming IPCC report are in for a rough ride. "There is already an orchestrated campaign against the IPCC by climate change contrarians," he says.

Many of the IPCC's authors, some of whom asked not to be named, say this is a smokescreen. They claim there is an extensive network of lobby groups and scientists involved in making the case against the IPCC and its reports. Automobile, coal and oil companies have coordinated and funded past attacks on them, the scientists say. Sometimes this has been done through Washington lobby groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), whose officers include Myron Ebell, a former climate negotiator for George W. Bush's administration. Recently, the CEI made television advertisements arguing against climate change, one of which ended with the words: "Carbon dioxide, they call it pollution, we call it life." CEI's past funders include ExxonMobil, General Motors and the Ford Motor Company.

The money trail

Some sceptical scientists are funded directly by industry. In July, The Washington Post published a leaked letter from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA), an energy company based in Colorado, that exhorted power companies to support the work of the prominent sceptic Pat Michaels of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Worried about the potential cost of cleaning up coal-fired power plants to reduce their CO₂ emissions, IREA's general manager, Stanley Lewandowski, wrote: "We believe that it is necessary to support the scientific community that is willing to stand up against the alarmists... In February this year, IREA alone contributed $100,000 to Dr Michaels."

The Fraser Institutes response to the IPCC report was a long time in the making, and a coordinated effort between them and the anti-climate change lobby, the flat earthers, in the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. And the organizations, front groups really, are all interconnected.

It was planned years ago, as new front organizations sprung up over the past three years in preparation for the IPCC report. While the Fraser Institute like its American counter-part the Cato Institute have existed since the seventies, groups like Canada's Natural Resources Stewardship Project, and the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition are all relatively new lobbying groups. Even the older Friends of Science. was only created in 2002.

The push was on by the right and their big business backers when they saw the writing on the wall after Kyoto was signed. One faction of capitalism endorsed Kyoto, another was ambivalent, and a handful, but a powerful handful, vehmently opposed Kyoto.

Having lost the war they now engage in a protracted series of battles to attempt to inundate doubt in the public mind, using fronts like Junk Science.com and Fox News, various assorted right wing media mouthpieces in Canada, Europe and America. They know they have lost, but if in anyway they can hold back radical changes required to deal with the heat death of the planet, to save their industries they will. Victory to them is to delay change.

And they will never go away, another issue will come to the fore that they can delay, attack, undermine, and deny. And the consipiratorial politics of denial will once again be used.

The Right Wing exposes the Janus nature of the ruling class. One face appeals to the public as liberal, seeking to ameliorate the worst excesses of capitalism, the other jingoist, nativist, reactionary seeks to dominate through demagoguery and populism. One is enlightened capitalism the other is fascism. Both are false choices.

The alternative is, as it has always been for the past one hundred years, Barbarism or Socialism.



See:

Fraser Institute

Environment

Conspiracy Theory

Fascism

Anti-Semitism


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Fraser Institute, climate change, environment, global warming,
Kyoto, UN, IPCC,
John Birch Society, Creationism, Minutemen, Fascism, Rosa Luxemburg, right wing, conspiracy, conspiracy theory, climage change denial,

Thunk Tank

King Ralph gets a nice perk from the retirement home for neo-cons the Fraser Institute. Not unexpected since the Fraser Institute spent the last thirteen years gushing over Ralph, giving him an annual award for putting into practice what they preach. Retiring Klein will join the Fraser Institute

King Ralph will continue to suck at the public teat as the right wing think tank is a charitable institution. King Ralph will be in good company with other political porkchoppers Preston Manning and Mike Harris. Love these neo-cons who complain about the Nanny State but suckle off the public teat with their 'charitable' foundations, and political consulting firms.


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Klein, Manning, Alberta, Premier, Fraser-Institure, think-tank, right-wing, Harris, Walker, politics, retirement, Canada

Fraser Institute Meets Bill O'Riley

Love this announcement from the Fraser Institute for their Flat Earth Report; note the Bill O'Riley like No Spin Zone pronouncement.

Climate Change Without the Spin:
An Independent Summary for Policymakers of the New IPCC Report

When spinning is exactly what this is all about. Another example of neo-con newspeak.


See

Environment


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Fraser Institute, climate change, environment, global warming,
Kyoto, UN, IPCC

Echo Chamber

Here we have more of the same echo chamber of the Flat Earth society of climate change deniers quoting each other without referencing they belong to the same old boys club.

For instance we get this right wing column in the London Free Press, a Quebecor/Sun newspaper,

Kyoto penalizes those trying to do good
The not-so-green cynics at the Small Dead Animals blogsite have dubbed Suzuki's tour, Flakes on a Plane, and worry about the amount of emissions-spewing fossil fuels Suzuki himself will burn up by the time his tour wraps up in Victoria.

Cynics? Cynics? Rightwhingnutbars is more like it. But of course this columnist is a member of the SDA fan club so he puts them in a charitable light.

And we have this report published in the Canadian Free (sic) Press

Asking the right questions about climate change

And the folks asking those right questins are

The Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP), a Canadian non-profit group, including a number of leading climate change sceptics, was launched October 12, 2006.

And they quote their pals in the Fraser Institute. As I pointed out here when they quote each other they fail to say they all belong to the same small circle of friends. Which is journalistically and intellectually dishonest, to say the least.

See:

Fraser Institute

Environment


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Fraser Institute, climate change, environment, global warming,
Kyoto, UN, IPCC

A Tax Break The Fraser Institute Hates

Now this is ironic. A tax break the Fraser Institute doesn't like.

“Canadians are investing in labour sponsored funds to get generous tax credits, not because the want to invest in Canadian entrepreneurs or expect to earn a high rate of return,”

Of course it's a tax break for the working class not the parasites of the investing class.


See:

Flaherty's Smoke and Mirrors

Vencap

Fire Sale

More Income Trust Fallout

A Peoples Program for Alberta

Workers Want Tax Credits NOT Tax Cuts

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Fraser Institute, Labour Sponsored Funds,tax breaks, venture capital,union sponsored investment,

Western Australia is world’s new top mining destination

Cecilia Jamasmie | April 11, 2022 

Western Australia has some of the world’s largest iron ore mines and it also hosts gold and lithium assets. (Stock image of the Super Pit in Kalgoorlie.)

Resource-rich Western Australia has been picked the most attractive region for mining investment in 2021, replacing the US state of Nevada, which fell to the third place in the latest annual survey of mining companies released by think-tank the Fraser Institute.


Canada’s Saskatchewan is still on the podium, climbing from a third place overall in 2020 to a second position in the 2021 index, which takes both mineral and policy perception into consideration.

Nevada, which topped the 2020 ranking, ranked third last year, followed by Alaska, Arizona, Quebec, Idaho, Morocco, Yukon, and South Australia.

The US was the country with the most jurisdictions considered among the world’s 10 most attractive by mining investors — Nevada, Alaska, Arizona and Idaho. Canada followed closely with three provinces at the top of the index — Saskatchewan, Quebec and the Yukon. Australia only had two states among the best ten destinations — Western Australia and Southern Australia.

Source: Fraser Institute’s Annual Survey of Mining Companies 2021.

As in previous years, the best places to invest in mining are located in developed countries with long histories of success in the industry, which not necessarily is a good thing.

The main issue is that the number of available projects in the top jurisdictions are limited, while some of the world’s best deposits are in places where doing business is, or is perceived as, risky.

Zimbabwe, which has an abundance of resources including gold, platinum, diamonds, lithium, chrome, and coal, ranked as the least attractive jurisdiction in the world for investment followed by Spain, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Mali.

Also in the bottom ten, beginning with the worst, are Nicaragua, China, Panama, Argentina’s Mendoza, Venezuela and South Africa.

Permit times

The survey also included a sub-ranking of exploration jurisdictions, based on the length of their permitting process.

This year’s report went beyond Canada, gathering data from Australia, the US and Scandinavia, all regions where mining, environmental and other policies are broadly comparable.

In most Canadian provinces and territories, the majority respondents said they were able to acquire the necessary exploration permits within six months. There were some notable differences among regions, particularly when comparing Manitoba, where 42% of participants said it took them 24 months or more to obtain all necessary permits, versus British Columbia, where the majority said it took between three and six months.

“Overall, senior mining executives continue to cite the uncertainty around protected areas, disputed land claims, and environmental regulations as major areas of concern for Canadian provinces and territories,” said Elmira Aliakbari, director of the Fraser Institute’s Centre for Natural Resource Studies and co-author of the study.

“Policymakers in every province and territory should understand that mineral deposits alone are not enough to attract investment,” Aliakbari said.

Quebec performed the best, with 60% of respondents indicated that they received exploration permits in two months or less. When comparing the four regions included in the survey — Canada, the United States, Australia, and Scandinavia — Canadian jurisdictions have, on average, a higher percentage of respondents indicating that it took six months or less for them to receive their permits.

Deja Vu: Gen XYY Neo-Cons

Another book on the neo-con youth revolution has been released.....Sigh.
Cute couple on the cover...thought it was a Women are from Ottawa, Men are from Medicine Hat kinda of advise book.

Another call from the right wing youth movement is just well so boooooring. If the right hasn't gotten its shit together after years of us suffering the earlier generation of neo-con youth revolutionaries that unholy cabal of Ezra Levant, Jason Kenney and Robert Anders, all Fraser Institute interns and Reform/Alliance/Conservative party hacks, then its never going to get its shit together....thank the gods of war for that.

So lets see Ezra published his manifesto for the conservative youth generation Youthquake back in 1997, published by the Fraser Institute with an introduction by Jason Kenney then President of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

The recent Fraser Institute publication Youthquake, by Ezra Levant, has been receiving quite a lot of attention from book reviewers. Here are some excerpts from the book:

On Government Charity:

"Too many programs designed to be social safety nets turn out to be hammocks: they trap people instead of getting them back to work."

On Pensions:

"Where the Canada Pension Plan is contributory—you have to pay into it to collect it—Old Age Security is pure gravy. You get it just for being old. It’s like a giant birthday present for every Canadian turning 65."

On Health Care:

"Sounds like a list for Santa: ‘I want free health care everywhere, all the time, plus peace on earth and my very own pony.’"

On Politicians And Pork:

"[I]n politics, only two things have value: money and votes. And where you find those twin political currencies, you’ll find government gravy."

On Youth And Debt:

"Just because we’re young doesn’t mean we should get free education. . . . We’ve been living in this fantasy world for so long, living off our credit and a smile, but now it’s catching up to us"

History will likely record Baby Boomers as the one anomalous generation to receive transfers from both its parents and its children.

Now almost a decade later another round of neo-con whiners come up with, well more of the same. And they are dopplegangers of the Levant/Kenney/Anders gang.

Tasha Kheiriddin (Toronto, ON) became the Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation in February, 2004.

Adam Daifallah (Quebec City, QC) is a Canadian author and journalist. A native of Peterborough, Ontario, he is currently a law student at Laval University in Québec City, where he is the recipient of the Richard J. Schmeelk scholarship. Adam was a member of the editorial board at the National Post, as well as the newspaper's curling columnist, from 2003 to 2005

In Rescuing Canada's Right, the authors examine the problems facing the Conservative Party and the broader conservative movement, and offer concrete solutions on how to fix them.

Hey what are ya saying that Levant, Kenney and Anders and the rest of the conservative youth movement failed? If thats so what makes these two think they have anything new to say, let alone that their prescription for change can succeed.

Some of the issues the book will address:

• Why the Conservative Party and its predecessor parties have such a poor electoral record;
• Why today's Conservative Party is not really conservative.
• Why a new political vision is necessary to inspire Canadians--and what it should be.
• How the Liberals use public money to entrench an unhealthy reliance on the state--and how the right has failed to challenge it
• What Canadian conservatives can learn from the American and British experiences
• How to build a Canadian Conservative counter-culture in the media, academia, and the law
• How the right can break through to the young, and to immigrants in Quebec
• An action plan to end Canada's democratic deficit and level the political playing field.

Rescuing Canada's Right will be a hard-hitting and groundbreaking work that will introduce new ideas and a passionate call for change for 21st century Canada.

Ho hum heard it all before, hey isn't this what the Reform Party was all about before it sold out to get elected, and then wasn't this what the Alliance was all about and now.....well you get the idea. The Conservative revolution failed due to the internal putsch like politics of Alberta Tories over Preston Manning. And the young Turks behind that putsch were Levant/Kenney/Anders.

Nothing hard hitting here, nothing groundbreaking, lets see a Canadian Conservative Counterculture already dominates our media, academia and the law.

Their new vision for Canada is Republican Lite. The only difference between this 'new generation' of conservatives and their youthful elders; Levant, Kenney and Anders, is these two are from Ontario.....

Milk without the cow: Cellular agriculture could be the future of farming, but dairy farmers need help

Evan Bowness, Postdoctoral Researcher, Food and Agriculture Institute, University of The Fraser Valley,

 Robert Newell, Associate Director, Food and Agriculture Institute, University of The Fraser Valley, 

Sarah-Louise Ruder, PhD Student at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia 


A new wave of cow-less dairy is hitting the market. In the United States, Perfect Day is using genetically modified fungi to produce milk protein for ice cream at a commercial scale. And pre-commercial companies, like TurtleTree and Better Milk, are engineering mammary cells to produce human and cow milk in laboratories, although these remain in the early stages of development.

© (Evan Bowness) Dairy cows in the Fraser Valley, B.C.

It might be some time before mammal-less dairy arrives in Canadian grocery stores. But these emerging technologies are part of the fourth agricultural revolution that aims to improve food security, sustainability and agricultural working conditions. With these promises for wins on the horizon, should the diary sector be worried?


As researchers from the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, in British Columbia, we study food systems in transition. The Fraser Valley is home to 60 per cent of B.C.’s dairy farms, so we’re especially interested in the impacts cellular agriculture might have on the dairy system.
Animal agriculture’s challenges

Animal agriculture plays a big role in the global food system. The Food and Agriculture Organization states that animal agriculture provides roughly a third of global food protein, supports the livelihoods of over a billion people and contributes to soil fertility.

But animal agriculture is facing increased scrutiny, especially around environmental impacts and animal welfare issues. It is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, upwards of 16.5 per cent of global emissions, by some estimates.

Animal agriculture is also vulnerable to extreme environmental conditions and climate change. Recent flooding in B.C. killed well over half a million farm animals and threatened to contaminate the sensitive freshwater ecosystems of the Fraser Valley with stored manure and agricultural chemicals. And it’s a known risk factor for zoonotic diseases and pandemics, such as H1N1 or the swine flu.

One way to reduce the risks introduced by animal agriculture is to remove — or nearly remove — livestock from the food production equation. Cellular agriculture uses cell cultures to produce animal products without raising livestock, hunting or fishing. While still in its early phases, this technology could help meet growing demand for animal protein, reduce environmental impacts and address animal welfare concerns.
How does cellular agriculture work?

Cellular agriculture makes biologically equivalent or near-equivalent foods to those produced with animals. This is different from plant-based meat and dairy alternatives, such as Beyond Burgers and oat milk, which use plant ingredients that approximate their non-vegetarian counterparts.

Read more: Plant-based doesn’t always mean healthy

One approach is to use advanced fermentation, where yeasts, fungi and bacteria are genetically modified to produce proteins. The approach is similar to brewing beer, but with highly specialized micro-organisms that follow instructions that have been added to their genetic code.

You may already be eating products created using this technology. Thirty years ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the use of a bioengineered form of rennet enzymes, which is widely used in cheese making and replaces the original enzymes which were harvested from calf stomachs.

Today, vats of micro-organisms, genetically modified to carry the appropriate calf gene, supply rennet for about 70 per cent of cheese made in the U.S. It’s functionally identical to the original cheese-making enzymes, but it’s easier, less costly to produce and doesn’t rely on mammals.

© (Shutterstock) Food scientists can use microorganisms to grow food ingredients in large vats, eliminating the need for livestock.

Another approach, called tissue engineering, uses cells collected from an animal to grow meat, fish or even leather in a controlled environment. The tissues grow, but in a nutrient-rich broth called growth media in bioreactor tanks.

Examples include GOOD Meat’s cellular chicken nuggets, the first commercially available cellular meat product, and WildType’s cellular salmon, which is being grown in stainless steel tanks in San Francisco.
What is at stake for dairy farmers?

Dairy is an important food commodity in Canada. Over 18,000 farm operators are employed at the roughly 10,000 dairy farms across the country, which together produced 9.5 billion litres of milk and earned farms over $7 billion in 2020.

To meet consumer demand and guarantee a fair price to the farmers, the Canadian supply management system controls dairy production volumes and the number of producers at the provincial level using a quota system. Farmers essentially buy the right to sell dairy products. Dairy farms are capital intensive and farmers often carry large debt loads, making it a difficult industry to enter.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward Flood waters rise outside a dairy barn near Agassiz, B.C., in November 2021.

Livestock farmers in B.C. had an exceptionally challenging 2021. After a summer of encroaching forest fires and a record-breaking heat dome, the year ended with catastrophic floods followed by extreme cold. Fraser Valley farmers were forced to dump 7.5 million litres of raw milk in November when shipping routes were destroyed by flooding, which also killed 428 dairy cows.

Across the country, dairy farmers also dumped milk early in the pandemic — more than 30 million litres in the year ending July 31, 2020, according to one analysis — when demand plummeted due to restaurant closures and other system shocks.
Planning a just transition

We see animal-free dairy as possibly having some environmental and food security benefits, but with some trade-offs.

If cellular agriculture competes with conventional dairy in Canada, what would the impact be on dairy farmers? What would happen to the cows? To the farms? To the supply management system in general?

Addressing these questions is critical for developing policy that enables transitions to food systems with lower environmental and carbon footprints while ensuring harms and benefits are distributed equitably — what’s known as the just transition.

Much of our understanding of these just transitions comes from the energy sector, where coal mines have closed and oil production is declining as renewable energy becomes more available and less expensive, changing economies and forcing fossil fuel workers to find other work.

Canada recently developed a just transition task force to look for ways to reduce the livelihood disruptions that come with phasing out coal. The federal government has also recently initiated consultations for just transition legislation that would direct resources to communities negatively impacted by the transition towards a low-carbon future.

Just transition policies for cellular agriculture could encourage farmers to transition into animal-free dairy production through infrastructure transition grants, support with licensing new technologies, biodiversity conservation and carbon credits for land sparing, sanctuary planning for current dairy farms and land back incentives to provide pathways for agriculture towards decolonization.

It’s unclear how soon Canadian dairy farmers will face competition from cellular agriculture, although some have suggested U.S. beef and dairy sector revenues will decline nearly 90 per cent by 2035.

Is it reasonable to expect Canadian dairy farmers will make way for cellular dairy? 

Or is up to policy-makers, industry leaders and food systems organizers to ensure this transition leads to a food system that is more sustainable, but also just?

Yadira Tejeda Saldana, research collaborations director at New Harvest, co-authored this article.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.


Evan Bowness receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada and Future Skills Centre Canada.

Robert Newell receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada and Future Skills Centre Canada.

Sarah-Louise Ruder receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada and Future Skills Centre Canada.

SFU researchers mapping landslides that could wipe out Fraser River salmon

Reports and Proceedings

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

A team of researchers from Simon Fraser University have returned to the scene of a massive 2018 landslide as part of a project aimed at preventing future extinction-level events.

On Nov. 1, 2018, the Big Bar landslide in British Columbia blocked the Fraser River, prevented salmon from getting back to their spawning grounds in the Upper Fraser Basin and threatened the future of the species.  

Remediation efforts are still ongoing, but researchers led by SFU are back at Big Bar to map the effects of the slide. Their work is part of a larger project aimed at assessing and mitigating the risk of landslides to critically important salmon in the Fraser River. 

“The 2018 landslide raised the issue that I think a lot of people knew might be possible, but no one really thought too much about: that if there was a landslide lower in the Fraser Basin, it would wipe out and cause the Fraser salmon to become extinct,” says Jeremy Venditti, director of SFU’s School of Environmental Science and principal investigator on the project. “We tend to think about landslides as being natural hazards in the sense that they can affect people. We don’t think of them as the sorts of events that can wipe out populations of plants and animals, but they can.”  

The federal and provincial governments announced funding last summer for Venditti and his team but some of the fieldwork was delayed by landslides in B.C. last fall, further highlighting the urgency of the project.  

The Big Bar location was a previous field site for Venditti’s team so they’ll be comparing their measurements from 2009 to now, to see how the 2018 slide changed the river and to understand how to better predict these types of events.  

The team will map the locations of past landslides using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data and surface exposure dating to establish a chronology of river blockages that can be compared to proxies of salmon abundance in the Fraser Basin.   

The project team includes experts in natural hazards, geomorphology, remote sensing, salmon migration and population genetics. Traditional Indigenous perspectives and oral history are also integral to the project. 

They will then identify sites of potential future impacts using a combination of riverbed surveys and bank topography, and LiDAR mapping to identify sites that require further geotechnical assessment. 

Possible mitigation could include engineering solutions, like fishways that can be built to help fish get over blocked passages in the event of a slide. 

“Our goal is to determine where the next landslide that can threaten salmon is going to happen,” says Venditti. “We enter this understanding landslides, understanding rivers and understanding how fish migrate, and have a team that’s excited to conserve and restore Fraser River salmon.” 

Other partners in this project include researchers from University of Northern British Columbia, University of Victoria, Durham University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Fraser Basin Council, the Hakai Institute, Fraser Salmon Management Council and Indigenous communities. 

Sean Fraser: 'Unacceptable' that immigrant surgeons are working as taxi drivers

Story by Naimul Karim •  Financial Post

Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Sean Fraser says Canada’s new immigration plan aims to accept in a record 1.45 million newcomers in the next three years.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said changes to Canada’s immigration program next year will rebalance the world’s “most powerful economic migration system” in a way that will help hospitals, builders and other employers address chronic labour shortages, as opposed to focusing mainly on “highly skilled workers.”

Fraser revealed that he plans to introduce new selection tools earlier this month while unveiling Canada’s new immigration plan , under which the government aims to accept in a record 1.45 million newcomers in the next three years. This is linked to a change in rules made under the express entry system through the Budget Implementation Act that was adopted in the House of Commons in June.

“This is a completely different approach than what has been the case historically, which simply did a draw for the highest scoring people in the system regardless of which sector they were going to work in or which region they are destined to,” Fraser said in an interview on Nov. 23.

The new selection tools will allow Fraser and future ministers to select immigrants to fill job gaps in specific industries and regions. By way of example, Fraser said he can now sift through applications to address New Brunswick’s shortfall of French language educators, Nova Scotia’s chronic lack of nurses, or Ontario’s constant struggle to find enough carpenters.

Economists and business associations mostly lauded Ottawa’s pledge to use immigration to address the labour crisis, as employers went into the summer with a record one million job vacancies, according to Statistics Canada.

Tiff Macklem, the Bank of Canada governor, said earlier this month that if Canada’a labour pool was larger, he probably wouldn’t have needed to raise interest rates as aggressively as he has this year to contain inflation. That’s because the shortage puts upward pressure on wages and hinders the ability of companies to keep up with demand.

The issue is bigger than volume. While technology companies are generally complimentary of Ottawa’s immigration efforts, other industries complain that the government became too enamoured with recruiting coders and software engineers. At the same time, non-tech immigrants who make it to Canada struggle to have their skills recognized by various professional associations, which hurts productivity because workers are blocked from meeting their full potential.

Fraser vowed to resolve both problems.

“The idea that we have neuro and dental surgeons who are working as taxi drivers … is unacceptable,” the minister said. “It’s really frustrating for me when I meet talented people who have arrived in Canada but are not able to contribute at their full potential.”

One of the professions most in need of workers is home builders, which according to BuildForce Canada , a national organization representing all sectors of the construction industry, are in high demand. The Ontario government last month said the province will need about 100,000 more construction workers this decade to meet its goal of building 1.5 million homes by 2031.

An argument against elevated immigration levels is the strain an influx of people could put on cities that are already short of housing stock. Critics argue that increased targets should align with infrastructure plans to ensure that the necessary services are in place to welcome everyone.

Fraser makes the point that by recruiting more construction workers, he can help accelerate the building of more homes, describing the labour shortage in the trades as “greatest bottleneck” to more supply.


A new Canadian attends a citizenship ceremony in Vancouver. New selection tools will allow Canadian officials to select immigrants to fill job gaps in specific industries and regions.© Darryl Dyck

When asked about specific plans on the roadmap that links immigration to Canada’s housing growth in the near future, the minister said that would be revealed by the housing ministry and that he didn’t want to “broadcast decisions” that the government hasn’t formally disclosed as yet.

There’s a risk that worries about whether communities can handle a sharp increase in newcomers will test favourable attitudes about immigration. A survey conducted by researchers Leger and the Association of Canadian Studies on 1,537 Canadians two weeks after the release of the government’s immigration plan said about 75 per cent were either somewhat or very concerned about the impact of the increased targets on the housing sector, which saw a steep rise in prices in the last three years, and social services.

A poll conducted by Environics Institute for Survey Research prior to the release of the new immigration plan, however, said that 85 per cent of its respondents felt that welcoming newcomers would lead to economic benefit, which is the highest number recorded by the group in 30 years.

Fraser, who has seen schools and mental health units close down in his home province of Nova Scotia due to depopulation, said he believes that most Canadians support immigration.

“I have seen a number of different polls that indicate a variety of different outcomes,” Fraser said. “Despite the fact that we need to continue to watch closely things like housing and the capacity of our … public services, we also need to be live to the fact that there are very real and severe economic and demographic consequences to not continuing to grow our population.”

Fraser added that aside from the housing and healthcare industries, technology firms were also “singing the same song” of needing more labour. “There is not a tech company that is positioned for growth in this country that I have spoken to, who has access to all of the talent that they need to grow,” said Fraser.

Aside from tackling labour shortage the minister pointed out that there are just three workers for every retiree today, compared seven about 50 years ago, a number that’s likely to decline if Canada doesn’t pursue growth through immigration.

Canada to admit 1.4 million immigrants in three years to address labour shortages

Canada’s housing woes won’t be solved by restricting newcomers, says immigration minister

Workers in Canadian Tire’s supply chain not paid ‘living wages,’ union complains

To be sure, that argument is contested by some economists, including Mikal Skuterud, a professor at the University of Waterloo, who said the number of retirements impacting the labour pools has been “overplayed” and that the impact of aging was more of a trend line that led to tighter market conditions rather than a sudden glut of grey-haired workers leaving the workforce in droves. According to Skuterud, immigration is an effective way to dampen the nominal wage growth to keep the wage pace from accelerating too quickly and triggering a wage-price spiral.

Fraser, though, said that at a macro level across the economy, there’s an urgent need to embrace immigration. “T he cost of choosing not to fill those vacancies is enormous to the Canadian economy,” he said.

• Email: nkarim@postmedia.com | Twitter: naimonthefield

C.D. Howe Canada's Grand Poobah

There is great irony in the fact that one of Canada's foremost establishment right of centre think tanks the C.D. Howe Institute which often promotes a neo-con agenda is named after one of Canada's foremost Pooh-Bahs of State Capitalism.

Grand Poobah is a term derived from the name of the haughty character Pooh-Bah
in Gilbert and
Sullivan's The Mikado. In
this comic opera,
Pooh-Bah holds numerous exalted offices, including Lord Chief Justice,
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Master of the Buckhounds, Lord High Auditor, Groom
of the Back Stairs, and Lord High Everything Else. The name has come to be used
as a mocking title for someone self-important or high-ranking and who either
exhibits an inflated self-regard, who acts in several capacities at once, or who
has limited authority while taking impressive titles.

Enter Pooh-Bah.

NANK. Ko-Ko, the cheap tailor, Lord High Executioner ofTitipu! Why, that's the highest rank a citizen can attain!
POOH. It is. Our logical Mikado, seeing no moraldifference between the dignified judge who condemns a criminal todie, and the industrious mechanic who carries out the sentence,has rolled the two offices into one, and every judge is now hisown executioner.
NANK. But how good of you (for I see that you are anobleman of the highest rank) to condescend to tell all this tome, a mere strolling minstrel!
POOH. Don't mention it. I am, in point of fact, aparticularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamiteancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you thatI can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomicglobule. Consequently, my family pride is somethinginconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering. But Istruggle hard to overcome this defect. I mortify my pridecontinually. When all the great officers of State resigned in abody because they were too proud to serve under an ex-tailor, didI not unhesitatingly accept all their posts at once?
PISH. And the salaries attached to them? You did.
POOH. It is consequently my degrading duty to serve thisupstart as First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chief Justice,Commander-in-Chief, Lord High Admiral, Master of the Buckhounds,Groom of the Back Stairs, Archbishop of Titipu, and Lord Mayor,both acting and elect, all rolled into one. And at a salary! APooh-Bah paid for his services! I a salaried minion! But I doit! It revolts me, but I do it!
NANK. And it does you credit.
POOH. But I don't stop at that. I go and dine withmiddle-class people on reasonable terms. I dance at cheapsuburban parties for a moderate fee. I accept refreshment at anyhands, however lowly. I also retail State secrets at a very lowfigure. For instance, any further information about Yum-Yumwould come under the head of a State secret. (Nanki-Poo takes hishint, and gives him money.) (Aside.) Another insult and, Ithink, a light one!

The C.D.Howe Institute flies in the face of the endeavours of Howe, who as Minister of Everything, oversaw the development of public and crown corporations in Canada. Federally funded, not joint private public partnerships, which of course would have demanded private capital to develop. With the victory of neo con agenda in the ninties promoting privatization of public and government infrastructure the C.D. Howe institute gave establishment legitimacy to the efforts of other right wing lobbyists and thnk tanks like the Fraser Institute and its east coast doppleganger; the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies , and the newly minted Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

The C.D. Howe Institute
(formerly the Howe Research Institute), is a nonprofit policy research
organization established in 1973 by a merger of the Private Planning Association
of Canada, formed in 1958, and the C.D. Howe Memorial Foundation. It is located
in Toronto. Its principal source of funding is the fees contributed by a
membership that includes corporations as well as individuals with a background
in business, the professions or academia. The institute's staff is responsible
for the preparation of the annual Policy Review and Outlook and various other
publications on topical issues. The institute also commissions leading
researchers (academics for the most part) to write papers and monographs on a
wide range of topics such as fiscal and monetary policy, trade policy, social
policy, the environment, federal-provincial relations and constitutional reform.
Although the main focus of the institute's research program is the economy, the
range of topics it has covered over the years is very wide and occasionally
extends to non-economic issues such as culture and ethnicity.

The right wing agenda saw public policy as moving from the State capitalizing public services and infrastructure and moving towards selling off those assets to deal with its debt and deficit crisis. Public good was now replaced with state funding for private profit. Howevere now that we face the economic melt down that this ideology resulted in we will see if this think tank of Canada's establishment changes it's tune. Why do I find that unlikely.

C.D. Howe Institute
Benefactors Lecture, 1997

D.G. McFetridge
Professor and Chair,
Department of Economics,
Carleton University
Toronto, October 22, 1997
Sponsored by Dofasco Inc.

The formation of public policy can be viewed from a number of perspectives.
Some see it largely as the outcome of tradeoffs between contending
interest groups; policy changes reflect nothing more than the ascendancy
of one interest group over another. To others, including the
C.D. Howe Institute, ideas matter. A good idea, well explained, can
overcome the power of even an entrenched interest group.
If ideas do matter, there is certainly merit in bringing the evidence
on the economic benefits of privatization to public attention. Privatization
is about more, much more, than selling off the bus company. It is
about institutional design, and in some countries (New Zealand, for
example) it has involved considerable reflection on just what should be
expected of government.
What we have come to call privatization is part of a larger process
of institutional change involving commercialization, contracting out,
and regulatory reform as well as the sale of state-owned enterprises to
the private sector. The literature on this process is vast but of uneven
quality.

The evidence on conventional contracting out, especially by municipal
governments, is unambiguously positive: it reduces the cost of
providing the services involved. There is more skepticism and less
evidence on the consequences of contracting for social services and for
the joint supply of infrastructure and services (public/private partnerships).
These instruments are likely to present serious—but not necessarily
insoluble — contract design problems. They may require the
government to be an active and strategic purchaser in ways not envisaged
by privatization zealots. Nevertheless, the potential economies,
especially in the accumulation and use of knowledge, make continued
experimentation worthwhile.
With respect to the entire process of commercialization, regulatory
reform, and the sale of state-owned enterprises to the private sector, the
weight of the evidence to date is that it has been beneficial. The precise
contribution of the change in ownership to the gains that have resulted
from the process as a whole is difficult to identify. One can argue,
however, that privatization is an essential part of the process in that it
provides the impetus for commercialization and makes regulatory reform,
especially regulatory forbearance, possible.
Whether or not privatization is a necessary part of the process, once
commercial objectives have been adopted and regulatory reform has
allowed competition or potential competition to exert its disciplining
force, there is little, if anything, to be gained from continued state
ownership — provided that the government sells its interest at a price
equal to the present value of the income it might expect to derive from
continued ownership.
Although the international experience with process ofcommercialization,
regulatory reform, and privatization has been favorable and
there are good conceptual arguments for privatization itself, the case for
individual privatizations must still be made on the merits. The body of
existing evidence is not so strong or so detailed that it can be taken to
imply that, say, the province of Saskatchewan would necessarily realize
significant economic benefits from privatizing its electric power or
telecommunications utilities.
The theoretical and empirical literature on privatization reminds
us to remain open to the potential benefits of employing decentralized
market or market-style incentives in place of hierarchy and command
and control. The ongoing international experimentation in institutional
design has been worthwhile and is clearly worth pursuing further.
The literature also teaches that privatization is frequently not about
pushing a button and getting less government. Unless the political
forces that brought about government intervention disappear (and they
may in some cases), privatization will be about getting different government,
rather than less government. It may involve catering to a different
set of interest groups or catering to the same interest groups in a
different way. It may involve the same or similar political activity
in different forums. It is often not simply a matter of opting for the
invisible hand.

C.D. Howe - "Minister of Everything" - Biography of C.D. Howe

C.D. Howe was a cabinet minister for 22 years, first in the government of Mackenzie King, and then in the government of Louis St. Laurent. Nicknamed the "Minister of Everything," C.D. Howe was forthright and forceful, and more interested in getting things done than in policy. He mobilized Canada for World War II, turning the Canadian economy from one based primarily on agriculture to one based on industry, and after the war turned it into a consumer economy spurred by veterans.

Career Highlights of C.D. Howe:
created a national air service, Trans-Canada Airlines (later Air Canada)
created the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a Crown corporation
created the National Harbours Board
restructured the debt-ridden Canadian National Railway (CNR)
established the St. Lawrence Seaway
established Canada's nuclear industry
initiated the Trans-Canada Pipeline
Professional Career of CD Howe:
Engineer
Taught at Dalhousie University in Halifax
Businessman - designed and built grain elevators
Political Affiliation:
Liberal Party of Canada
Riding (Electoral District):
Port Arthur (Ontario)
Political Career of CD Howe:
C.D. Howe was first elected to the House of Commons in 1935.
He was appointed Minister of Railways and Canals and also Minister of Marine. The two departments were soon combined into the Ministry of Transport. C.D. Howe oversaw the reorganization of Canadian National Railways, and the creation of the National Harbours Board and Trans-Canada Airlines, the forerunner of Air Canada.
In 1940, C.D. Howe was appointed Minister of Munitions and Supply in charge of war production for Canada. As head of the War Supply Board, and with the authority of the War Measures Act, C.D. Howe created a huge rearmament program using "dollar-a-year men," business executives called to Ottawa to reorganize the economy. The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which created more than 100 aerodromes and landing fields and trained over 130,000 airmen, was one of the results.
In 1944, C.D. Howe was appointed Minister of Reconstruction, and then Minister of Reconstruction and Supply, and began turning the economy toward consumer needs.
C.D. Howe became Minister of Trade and Commerce in 1948.
In 1951, with the growth of the Cold War, C.D. Howe became Minister of Defence Production as well as Trade and Commerce and oversaw the growth of the Canadian aircraft industry.
In 1956, C.D. Howe forced the plan for the Trans-Canada Pipeline, a gas pipeline from Alberta to central Canada, through Parliament but paid heavily when the Liberal government lost the next election and he lost his seat.
C.D. Howe retired from politics in 1957 at the age of 70.

C. D. Howe
C. D. Howe was known for getting things done.
That made him exactly the type of leader Canadians needed to channel their domestic energies into military might during the Second World War.
Clarence Decatur Howe is best remembered as Prime Minister Mackenzie King's right-hand man. When King decided to meld responsibility for railways, marine transport and civil aviation into one powerful Ministry of Transport in 1936, the prime minister put Howe in charge.
Not only did Howe's achievements in transport help ready Canada's transportation systems for the massive load they would have to carry during the war, but the transportation policy expertise he acquired left him well-prepared to direct the all-important Ministry of Munitions and Supply during the war.
Howe was, as he put it, a "Canadian by choice." A carpenter's son, he was born in Waltham, Mass., in 1886, moving to Canada in 1908 to teach civil engineering at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He later established a consulting engineering firm that specialized in grain elevators.
King brought Howe into politics in 1935 and he immediately began to cut a swath through bureaucracy, refusing to be bound by tradition and red tape, seeing himself much more as an implementer than a policymaker.
Howe was particularly interested in establishing a strong Canadian presence in the growing field of civil aviation.
He was instrumental, before and after the war, in establishing or expanding Trans-Canada Air Lines, the National Harbours Board, Canadian National Railways, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the TransCanada Pipeline and even the CBC.
Canada's first Minister of Transport took over a Canadian transportation system that was fragmented and outdated.
He centralized the administration of ports and reformed the debt-laden CNR, increasing efficiency and accountability that would be so important during the war.
Unemployed workers of the "Dirty '30s" were mobilized to build airstrips across the country and Trans-Canada Air Lines, Air Canada's predecessor, was established as a Crown corporation.
All these measures helped to pull the country's transportation network out of the Depression, preparing it for the incredible challenge that it would face in 1939-45.
When Canada entered the war in September 1939, Howe retained the Transport portfolio but was also asked to take on Munitions and Supply.
One of Britain's first requests was that Canada play host to the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which would train nearly 50,000 pilots and groundcrew by war's end.
Howe left Transport to concentrate on Munitions and Supply in July 1940, but continued to prod the transportation sector for the extraordinary performances he was demanding of other Canadian industries.
Before the end of the war in 1945, railway traffic had tripled in Canada as food, munitions and other war supplies were rushed to Atlantic ports.
Howe was criticized for forging ahead with little regard for costs, but the results he engendered soon silenced his critics. Costs wouldn't matter if the war was lost, he told colleagues, and in victory, costs would be forgotten.
The war, of course, was won and the relentless energy of Canada's first Minister of Transport played a major role in the victory.
Canada's other wartime ministers were P. J. A. Cardin, 1940-42; J.-E. Michaud, 1942 - April 1945, and Lionel Chevrier, April 1945 - June 1954.

SEE:

Right Wing Environmentalists

The Real Story of Alberta's BSE Crisis

The End of Public ACCESS

CKUA History of a privatization putsch

Canada’s Billion Dollar P3 Boondoggle

Social Insecurity- The Phony Pension Crisis

Laundry Workers Fight Privatization

Legacy Of The Ralph Revolution

Private Vs. Public Monopoly

P3= Public Pension Partnerships

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