Forced Co-operation Recipe for Bad Blood Among Alberta Municipalities: Edmonton Journal Op-Ed
Last May, the provincial government took steps to modernize Alberta’s Municipal Government Act.
One of the major changes was a call for forced inter-municipal cooperation, where arbitration would bind municipalities through shotgun marriages with the goal of squeezing out efficiencies in service production. Forced cooperation of this nature, however, has been shown to be harmful elsewhere in Canada.
The provincial government should instead look towards a more flexible model for enhancing inter-municipal cooperation, such as British Columbia’s regional districts.
Inter-municipal cooperation can be an effective means of providing services while not sacrificing economies of scale and scope. Municipalities may…
We have often heard that Canadians are unprepared for retirement. Low interest rates have meant low returns to saving and have accelerated the demise of defined-benefit pension plans in the private sector. People — we are told — are not saving enough for retirement to compensate. But such fears of retirement unpreparedness are overblown.
Studies on the subject have typically ignored retirement savings beyond the three traditional retirement pillars of: 1) Old-Age Security (OAS and the Guaranteed Income Supplement); 2) CPP and the Quebec Pension Plan; and 3) workplace pensions and RRSPs. Specifically, gloomier reports have neglected wealth accumulated in the fourth pillar of retirement, made up of non-pension assets. As Fred…
Canadians seem to have a warm and fuzzy feeling about the Democratic Party, aided by the obnoxious and vitriolic bombast of Donald Trump, disgracefully displayed during Monday night’s U.S. presidential debate.
Canadians should shed these illusions. While our trade relations with the United States will be hugely toxic under a Trump presidency – he has no interest in building relationships with anyone – things won’t be that much better under Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. That was made clear during Monday night’s debate.
Mr. Trump repeated what he’s been saying for months about the North American free-trade agreement being an unmitigated disaster for the United States. There were no surprises here, his poisonous anti-…
