For the impulsive, throwing all budget-balancing concerns during this election campaign to the four winds must be a gas. What if you had no bottom-line constraint in your household budget? You could eat, drink, indulge – even quit your job! Or in your business? First-class everything – and forget sales! At the C.D. Howe Institute and other charities? Gala events and all the perks – even if we deliver no value and attract no donations! Wouldn’t that be great?
Well, actually, no. It wouldn’t be great. Thoughtless overindulgence is bad – at home, in business or anywhere else. Especially in government.
The essence of wisdom is judgment in your choices: evaluating the options and striving for the most value in exchange for what…
For Canadians concerned about national finances, the 2019 federal election campaign has been a double whammy. Personal smears and social-media mobbing have mostly eclipsed substance. And the discussions of budgetary policy that have cut through the noise have been discouraging. Especially the commitments for more and bigger deficits: even more red ink in the next four years than was spilled in the past four.
Economists are divided about how much that matters. If the ratio of federal debt to GDP is stable, some say, we are good. Others, like me, don’t like how deficits burn up savings, heralding a future with less infrastructure, housing, machinery and technology than we otherwise would have enjoyed. If there’s no consensus on…
Canadian governments are making good on a 2016 pledge to cut oil-and-gas-sector methane emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2012 levels by 2025.
Since the pledge, both Alberta and the federal government have issued rules on reducing leaks of methane, which is many times as potent a heat trapper as carbon dioxide, and both are slated to go into effect next year.
In recent weeks, however, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed relaxing regulation of oil-and-gas-sector methane emissions, sparking debate about whether new tougher emissions rules will make Canada uncompetitive in attracting oil and gas investment.
Nevertheless, for our energy to retain market share globally, Canadian production…
