If the notwithstanding clause is the nuclear option, Ottawa should respond proportionately
Monday, September 22nd, 2025
… the original constitutional bargain, the one at our founding in 1867, was that the federal government would be the defender of rights against the depredations of local majorities. And the instrument of that defence… was to be the disallowance power… Disallowance, to be sure, has lately fallen into disuse. So, for more than 30 years, had notwithstanding. That has not prevented provincial governments from reviving it; neither should the mere passage of time prevent Ottawa from invoking disallowance.
Tags: featured, ideology, jurisdiction, rights
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
The three fiscal taboos Canada can no longer afford
Saturday, September 6th, 2025
Federal health and social transfers have also long outlived their usefulness: where once conditional transfers might have been needed as a catalyst for national standards, today they are among the main obstacles to health care reform; Restoring the two points to the GST… would leave it no higher than it was 20 years ago, and far lower than in most countries with similar taxes; … those at the top paying more in tax, overall… on their stock options… capital gains… dividend tax credits
Tags: budget, economy, featured, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
A shrinking population is hardly what this country needs right now
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025
Are wages stagnant? Are houses overpriced? Is the health care system overburdened? It must be because of all those pesky people: the “overpopulation” and “crowding”… [But] Population growth has already slowed to a trickle… The problem… is not that we have too many people: it is that we have too little capital, and too little incentive to make efficient use of the capital we have. Fixing those ought to be our priority
Tags: economy, Health, housing, ideology, standard of living
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Surrendering to the provinces doesn’t bring peace to the federation. It only emboldens them
Wednesday, January 10th, 2024
The thesis… that peace with the provinces is the highest aim of federal policy, and that the way to achieve it is to give them everything they want – or at least to never give them any offence – is a recipe for national paralysis. There are issues on which federal leadership is essential… how we got here [is] not because the federal government has been too hard on the provinces, but because it has been altogether too indulgent of them.
Tags: economy, ideology, jurisdiction, rights
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How Ottawa can help fix health care: first, send less money
Friday, January 27th, 2023
When one level of government is raising the money, while another spends it, it makes it hard for the public to know who to hold to account for any of the system’s ills. That, too, dulls any lingering incentive for reform… without Ottawa to share the blame for underperformance, provincial governments would have a stronger incentive to organize the delivery of health care so as to achieve greater quality and public satisfaction per dollar spent.”
Tags: budget, Health, jurisdiction, mental Health, tax
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Canada’s rapidly approaching fiscal crisis isn’t driven by the pandemic
Sunday, December 6th, 2020
… thanks to the remorseless arithmetic of population aging, with its crushing combination of higher costs (mostly for health care) and lower revenues (with fewer people of working age to earn income or pay taxes on it)… the provinces’ collective debt-to-GDP ratio is likely to hit 120 per cent by mid-century.
Tags: economy, jurisdiction, standard of living, tax
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The feds can’t make the provinces ‘do the right thing’ on the pandemic, but they can make it worth their while
Wednesday, November 18th, 2020
… it can still structure its assistance in ways that offer provinces incentives to take a tougher line… That was the idea, you’ll recall, behind the Safe Reopening Agreement: in return for $19-billion in federal dough, the provinces made certain undertakings with regard to things like testing – they were supposed to be testing 200,000 people a day by now (actual figure: roughly 50,000). Any further assistance should be contingent on provinces meeting broader standards of policy stringency – and should be withheld without it.
Tags: budget, Health, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
An ambitious plan for an alternate reality
Friday, September 25th, 2020
This is the prospect that has so entranced the Prime Minister’s Office: bundling all the policies they’d ever dreamed of together and passing them all in a rush – in the name of “the pandemic” – and doing it all with borrowed funds. The government that failed at so basic a state responsibility as safeguarding public health is eager to take on new challenges.
Tags: budget, economy, Health, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
The landmark Charter challenge over private health-care wasn’t about what you thought it was
Sunday, September 13th, 2020
the heart of the plaintiffs’ argument… If governments are to impose a monopoly over the funding of health care, they have an obligation to see that it is provided in a timely fashion… User fees and private insurance may not be the answer to wait times, but it is not impossible that the system could be reformed in such a way as to make more efficient use of resources, without harm to the principle of universal public funding.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, rights
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
The Liberals seem to think they have abolished scarcity. Let’s hope they’re right
Saturday, September 5th, 2020
There was widespread public consent earlier this year to the proposal that the economy should be put into a coma, to prevent the spread of a deadly disease… Spending hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed money to keep the lights on in the midst of a once-a-century pandemic made sense. Borrowing billions more to fulfill every Liberal dream, political or ideological, does not.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, tax
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
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