Koch has been a champion for agriculture and a senior government executive
Kenneth Brown of The Crossroads Saskatchewan Party leadership candidate Alanna Koch says she wants to continue building on the legacy of service that will be left behind by Premier Brad Wall. There are six candidates running for the Saskatchewan Party leadership. They will be featured in a series of articles over a five-week period leading…
Gord Wyant is five candidates running for the Saskatchewan Party leadership
Kenneth Brown of The Crossroads Saskatchewan Party leadership candidate Gordon Wyant says he plans to lead the party in line with its founding principles if he is elected to be the next premier. There are five candidates running for the Saskatchewan Party leadership. The five candidates will be featured in a series of articles over…
How the Saskatchewan government’s predatory lending practices doomed the Meadow Lake pulp mill
Saskatchewan’s Meadow Lake pulp mill was doomed from the beginning. The repercussions are still being felt, according to a new research paper. It’s been decades since the government of Grant Devine (he was premier from 1982 to 1991) was in power in Saskatchewan. But traces of the Conservative premier’s economic decisions remain. The Meadow Lake…
Assume that Canada was sent a job posting by a headhunter. It sought applicants for the world’s top oil and gas jurisdiction
Here’s a project for my energy and social media colleagues. Let’s build a tool for Canadians to understand how important the oil and gas sector is to this country – and will be for decades. We can pass it on to Canadian politicians who need to upgrade their energy-related knowledge. Assume that Canada was sent…
Saskatchewan's new education minister wants a back-to-basics approach to math instruction that would give students much-needed skills
After enduring years of fuzzy math, Saskatchewan parents may finally have cause for hope. Not only did the provincial government’s latest throne speech acknowledge that Saskatchewan students have the worst math skills in the country, it pledged to address the problem with a “common-sense” plan that focuses on the basics. That’s good news for parents…
The Liberal's Great Supercluster Screw-up just another drain on Canadian taxpayers
Governments always want to look like they’re implementing good ideas and accomplishing important things. Take the Innovation Superclusters Initiative (ISI) for example. The federal government plans to throw almost a billion tax dollars at non-profit groups to create jobs and help Canadian companies dominate the world. As crazy as it sounds, that’s the ostensible reason…
Options for reform are severely limited so long as a rule requiring program costs to escalate every year remains
By Ben Eisen and Joel Emes The Fraser Institute Jason Kenney, candidate for the leadership of Alberta’s United Conservative Party, recently called for reform to Canada’s equalization program. Specifically, he suggested a referendum in Alberta to force the federal government to consider removing non-renewable resource revenue (in Alberta’s case, mostly revenue from oil) from calculations…
Justin risks a similar fate to his father's if he also allows the radical wing of his party to undermine the economy
The 2015 federal election campaign may be fading from our memory but we can't forget that in that pivotal campaign the Liberals painted a balanced and attractive picture of Canada's future. Led by the unproven but photogenic Justin Trudeau, the Liberals promised to be more aggressive in protecting the environment and advancing the interests of…
How a deep trust and enduring friendship helped craft Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and ensure lasting provincial autonomy
By John von Heyking and Thomas Kazakoff University of Lethbridge The relationship between Peter Lougheed and Allen Blakeney demonstrated how consistent trust for one another over a decade’s political enterprise became the foundation for a political friendship, and helped forge Canada as we know it. In his essay Reflections on the Kitchen Accord (2012), former…
A rule requiring payments to grow – no matter what the circumstances – can only exacerbate regional friction
By Ben Eisen and Joel Emes The Fraser Institute The relative economic strength of Canada’s provinces has shifted in recent years, as former powerhouses struggle while former laggards improve. The nation’s equalization program is not equipped to respond fairly to these developments. In the past two fiscal years, Quebec has collected more revenue from natural resources…