Op-Eds
Published in the Calgary Herald on January 24, 2012
By Colin Busby
Ottawa surprised the provinces last month by unilaterally announcing that future federal support for health would grow more slowly, and would be tied to population growth and the strength of the economy. But most of the provincial premiers who gathered in Victoria last week saw it as a provocative snub.
After loud throat clearing, the provinces announced plans for a joint research initiative into the health funding system and opportunities for learning from different policies. This might be a good outcome, and one that draws on the strengths of federalism.
At the heart of the provinces’ fight is the Canada health transfer. The cash value of…
Published in the Financial Post on December 2, 2011
By Philippe Bergevin And Daniel Schwanen
Is Canada open for business? Many people asked that question, here and abroad, after the November 2010 withdrawal by Australia's BHP Billiton Ltd. of its $39-billion bid to acquire PotashCorp of Saskatchewan. More than a year on, the question still needs an answer, and the federal government needs to act.
After the controversy that surrounded BHP's withdrawal, Tony Clement, then Minister of Industry, said that the foreign investment decision-making process in Canada, under the Investment Canada Act, should be reviewed to "provide greater clarity to Canadians and greater certainty to international investors." A…
Published in the Globe and Mail on June 28, 2011
By Serge Coulombe
Most people want to get rich. In general, there are two ways to do so: being an efficient worker or dumb luck. As it goes for people having higher incomes, so it goes for Canada’s economic growth.
Canada won the natural resource lottery in the past decade with booming resource prices. In the long run, however, Canada’s economic well-being is largely determined by the effectiveness of its workers, not by luck. Unfortunately, improvements in production per worker, or labour productivity growth, for the provinces during the decade have been very low from an international perspective – behind the United States and the major countries of Europe.
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Published in The Globe and Mail on February 17, 2011
By Finn Poschmann
Can selling a company that some us think of as a strategic asset to non-Canadian investors deliver a net benefit to Canada? That is a loaded question, one that can spark an explosion at the intersection of nationalist sentiment, industrial strategy and political populism.
In the 1970s and into the ’80s, the words “foreign investment” gained an unsavoury patina; the spectre of foreign control frightened federal and provincial governments into buying resource companies in defence, they said, of national interests and industrial policy. Ottawa was openly hostile to takeovers and taxpayers ended up owning some ungainly resource firms and much…
Don Cayo, business columnist for the Vancouver Sun, devotes his August 15, 2008 column to a discussion of a recent C.D. Howe Institute paper by Ben Tomlin, Clearing Hurdles: Key Reforms to Make Small Business More Successful. As Cayo comments, Tomlin makes the case that government tax breaks to small businesses may also hold many of them back, discouraging them from ever becoming larger. The Vancouver Sun, Friday, August 15, 2008. Page: G3. Section: BusinessBC. Byline Don Cayo.