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By cityprole, on May 25, 2013, at 1:02 pm
Nadeem Esmail
Director, Health Policy Studies, The Fraser Institute
Bulk Buying Pharmaceuticals Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be Posted: 05/24/2013 5:30 pm
OOOHHHH….a warning from a minion of the Fraser Institute..couldn’t be his Big Pharma puppeteers steering him into this scary-sounding piffle…now, could it? The facts are that even Big Pharma screws up, or else all those massive lawsuits would be fairytales..nope, they stand to lose out on all their billions, so naturally, who else but the Fraser Institute, good buddies of corporations and the rightwing whackadoodles out there (who (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on May 12, 2013, at 10:29 am Yes, there’s generally reason to be skeptical of corporate apologists trying to claim a populist, anti-corporate-welfare mantle while pushing for business to contribute less and less to society as a whole. But even if we weren’t going to hold that skepticism against the Fraser Institute’s Mark Milke, there are two gigantic assumptions that make it clear he’s interested in something far less than a fair assessment of the public interest in regulating and taxing markets.
First, there’s this on resource royalties: In the context of resources, be it royalty rates on oil, gas or minerals, or stumpage rates set (Read more…)
By David Climenhaga, on May 10, 2013, at 2:06 am Generous corporate donor drops off cash at Tory headquarters. Actual donors, who may not be exactly as illustrated, will be determined later. Below: Parkland Institute researcher Trevor Harrison and Tory Human Services Minister Dave Hancock.
It’s a conundrum!
What should Alberta’s Tories do? A study by the University of Alberta’s Parkland Institute released yesterday demonstrates something almost everyone already knew anyway – that most Albertans strongly support limits on election spending.
So not setting limits on donations from corporations and unions, or enforcing the rules about how donations are made – Hey, Daryl Katz, c’mon down! – potentially spells big (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on May 1, 2013, at 9:43 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Thomas Walkom writes that yesterday’s minor tinkering aside, the goal of the Cons’ temporary foreign worker program is still to drive down Canadian wages. And Miles Corak argues that the resulting distortion of employment markets shouldn’t be any more acceptable to a libertarian than a progressive: Flooding the market with workers from elsewhere, year in and year out – even during a major recession – is not about an acute labour shortage. It is nothing more than a wage subsidy to low-paying firms, a subsidy that stunts the reallocation of goods, capital, and (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on April 25, 2013, at 9:31 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Andrew Simms and Stephen Reid note that the corporatist dogma that everything is done more efficiently in the private sector has no apparent basis in reality: The myth of private sector superiority says that the private sector is efficient and dynamic, the public sector wasteful and slow; that the more we can get the private sector to run things the better. That the head of a massive public enterprise like the Olympics can so blithely discount what underpins it demonstrates its reach. In fact, while billboard adverts said we had commercial sponsors (Read more…)
By Iglika Ivanova, on April 24, 2013, at 2:45 pm On April 23, the Fraser Institute released the annual update of their misleading Consumer Tax Index report. The piece is meant to feed the anti-tax sentiment with numbers sprinkled liberally for their shock value instead of providing any meaningful analysis. Here are some of the main flaws with the report’s methodology.
If what follows sounds familiar, it’s because I’m drawing heavily from the analysis I did in 2010 here, here and here. All of these critiques continue to apply to the 2013 report, which is based on the exact same problematic methodology as earlier editions employed.
The Fraser Institute’s (Read more…)
By himelfarb, on April 12, 2013, at 2:24 pm
Public servants celebrating the enrolment of 5 million citizens in the Ontario Hospital Insurance Plan (1959, Archives of Ontario)
Notes for talk at Public Policy Forum Dinner, April 11, 2013
I am delighted to be here with family, friends and colleagues this evening – an evening that can only be understood as a celebration of Canada’s public service. Such celebrations are pretty rare these days though the public service is an institution that deserves celebrating, and may need it now more than ever.
My hunch is that I can speak for all the former clerks here this evening that for
. . . → Read More: Alex’s Blog: Celebrating Public Service
By Greg Fingas, on April 11, 2013, at 9:38 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Thomas Walkom adds another piece to the picture showing the Cons’ efforts to shift both jobs and wealth offshore, pointing out that lax visa rules have only encouraged RBC-style outsourcing schemes. Craig McInnes recognizes that a cheap, low-rights worker strategy is a problem whether labour is imported to Canada or exploited abroad. Haroon Siddiqui, David Doorey, Heather Mallick and Barbara Yaffe express their own outrage about the deliberate elimination of Canadian jobs. And the Alberta Federation of Labour calls attention to the scope of the temporary foreign worker program.
-
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on April 5, 2013, at 11:17 am Assorted content to end your week.
- Frances Russell weighs in on the Cons’ continued contempt for democracy: The Conservatives under Stephen Harper are running an effective dictatorship. They believe they are quite within their rights to muzzle Parliament, gag civil servants, use taxpayer money for blatant political self-promotion, stand accused of trying to subvert a federal election and hand over much of Canada’s magnificent natural heritage to the multinational oil and gas lobby.
What is even more disturbing is that the national media, with a few notable exceptions, has underplayed or ignored these developments that are a clear assault
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By Erin Weir, on April 4, 2013, at 7:27 pm On Monday, Andrew wrote that we need a Bay Street sunshine list. Today, we got something almost as good: a Fraser Institute sunshine list, courtesy of US tax filings and The Ottawa Citizen’s Glen McGregor.
This piece is a great counterpoint to the Fraser Institute’s recent attack on public-sector salaries. I hope it is printed in the newspaper as well as being posted on The Citizen’s blog.
The defence of the Fraser Institute’s generous salaries is priceless: “His own salary [$184,000], Veldhuis says, is a lot lower than what he would earn in the private sector.”
By Greg Fingas, on April 3, 2013, at 1:15 pm Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Stephen Hume rightly mocks the Fraser Institute for using its tax-exempt status to whine about individuals who don’t earn enough to pay income taxes. But I’ll take the opportunity to reiterate a point I’ve made before: progressive governments in particular will do far better to consider how public resources can be used to benefit people of all income levels, rather than buying into the “get people off the tax rolls” rhetoric that only allows corporate interests to make arbitrary distinctions between “makers and takers”.
- Meanwhile, Canadians for Tax Fairness catch bank
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By Richard Hughes, on March 13, 2013, at 10:49 pm
Richard Hughes-Political Blogger
You have to hand it to the ‘Right Wing Nuts.’ when. The smallest gaggle of true believers seem able to attracting funding and dispense their gospel broadly throughout the MSM without a murmur of questioning, measuring or guaging its’ accuracy or value.
In Canada we are home to a number of these groups . In BC we are home to the ‘Fraser Institute’ who with a clever twist developed the debt clock, which according to them showed sometime in June when our tax burden was paid.
They neglect to show the contributors to that debt, tax breaks,
. . . → Read More: Cowichan Conversations: Canadian Taxpayer Federation Exposed! In running for ‘Turfy Award’
By Richard Hughes, on March 12, 2013, at 11:44 pm Richard Hughes-Political Blogger
I have watched the BCTF campaign ads over the years. They squander hundreds of thousands of dollars on some really well produced ads and then choke and say stupid things like ‘Vote for Education’ or ‘Vote for Smaller classrooms.”
The BCTF’s latest is ‘Let’s Vote for Better Schools!’ This is brilliant. Now, who would that be exactly?
BCTF President Susan Lambert
The BC Liberals preach about their commitment to families and education.
Surely the BC Greens support the schools. The BC Conservatives, well I don’t know what they say but I am sure that is
. . . → Read More: Cowichan Conversations: Let’s Vote For Better Schools! BCTF TV Advertising Is Pathetic!
By Greg Fingas, on February 28, 2013, at 8:52 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Molly Ball writes about the false assumptions underlying far too much political discussion – with one looming as particularly significant for Canadian purposes: 5. Campaign ads really, really, really don’t make much difference.
In this part of the paper, Fiorina’s exasperation becomes palpable. Political scientists have studied the effect of campaign media for decades and consistently found it to be very small. But that doesn’t stop commentators from talking endlessly about the potential effects of ads. “I shall say no more about this, because given the long history of the disjunction, it
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
By Marc Lee, on February 25, 2013, at 11:27 am Some colleagues at the US NGO Global Exchange tipped me off to some sneaky data doctoring done by the Fraser Institute on climate change. The source is Understanding Climate Change: Lesson Plans for the Classroom, a resource for high school teachers. The particular graph is on page 69 (first page if you click on Lesson 5), attributed to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies:
The text comments only that “The graph illustrates that temperatures have risen over time, except during a cooling period between 1940 and 1970 (a period during which CO2 levels rose rapidly).” Later, the lesson plans prompts
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Tales from the Mouth of the Fraser: Climate Change Denial Edition
By Greg Fingas, on February 1, 2013, at 8:57 am Assorted content for your Friday reading.
- In response to the Fraser Institute’s latest attempt to foment panic (to be used as an excuse to attack public programs and hand yet more free money to corporations), Trish Hennessy explains the province’s choices in terms anybody should be able to understand: The austerity experiment has been waged in several European Union countries: Massive cuts in government spending for four years drove Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland into full-scale economic depression. Meanwhile, the U.K. is struggling to get off its austerity treadmill, despite the less than stellar results there.
Ontario could
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By David Climenhaga, on January 30, 2013, at 1:06 am Women clerical workers, as the Fraser Institute would like to see them.
The Fraser Institute didn’t write the book “How to Lie With Statistics,” a guy named Darrell Huff did, but they might as well have!
You’ve got to have a little respect for the tireless political lobbyists at the Vancouver-based “institute” – they just never flag in their efforts to twist facts like pretzels to fit their paymasters’ ideological agenda.
The full-time political lobby group’s recent “study” purporting to demonstrate that public sector workers in Alberta earn 10 per cent more than their private sector counterparts is
. . . → Read More: Alberta Diary: The 10% Delusion: Fraser Institute gins up fake facts about Alberta public sector pay
By David Climenhaga, on January 17, 2013, at 1:22 am They kissed us once. Will they kiss us again? Alas, in Alberta right now, there’s no way to be cert- cert- certain. Alison Redford chats with a typical Alberta voter last spring – although, Alberta politicians and their supporters may not turn out to be exactly as illustrated. Below: The real Ms. Redford, Finance Minister Doug Horner.
Here in 14 words is the conundrum that faces the Progressive Conservative government of Alberta Premier Alison Redford: you can be progressive, or you can be conservative, but you can’t be both.
So which is it?
The problem that confronts Ms. Redford’s PCs
. . . → Read More: Alberta Diary: The Redford Tories’ conundrum: Progressive reason versus Conservative passion
By Greg Fingas, on January 16, 2013, at 11:45 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Bill Curry reports on what looks like a thoroughly warped view of the role of the Minister of Justice and Parliament in assessing the constitutionality of legislation (h/t to bigcitylib): Ottawa is crafting legislation that risks running afoul of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms without informing Parliament, a federal lawyer charges.
In a highly unusual case, Department of Justice lawyer Edgar Schmidt is challenging his own department in Federal Court and revealing details about the internal guidelines used by federal lawyers. The department accuses Mr. Schmidt of violating his
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By David Climenhaga, on January 16, 2013, at 1:57 am This just in! The latest mainstream media news straight from the Vancouver studios of the Fraser Institute, complete with no fact checking!
No sooner noted than illuminated – yesterday morning mainstream media was credulously reporting another “Fraser Factoid,” this one a report by the far-right political lobby group purporting to show Albertans get poor value for the money they spend on public health care.
Actually, since in this case the market-fundamentalist “think tank” had little choice but to rely on publicly available and legitimate research to tease out its predictable conclusions, the news couldn’t be made to seem as bad
. . . → Read More: Alberta Diary: Misleading with statistics: the Fraser Institute on health care and ‘value for money’
By bigcitylib, on January 15, 2013, at 11:14 am The Fraser Institute continues to take ($150,000) in Koch Brothers money, and claims zero political activity in 2011. If the Sierra Club is in violation, you would think Fraser would be. Mind you, its probably not enough to bitch. Someone would probably have to lodge a complaint with the Compliance Division of the Charities Directorate of Revenue Canada. The way Ethical Oil did. Hmm. A template for similar action against Fraser?
By David Climenhaga, on January 15, 2013, at 1:01 am Michael Walker, right, President of the Fraser Institute Foundation and former director of the Fraser Institute, looks at a copy of the Edmonton Sun with a well-known columnist from that newspaper. The great public intellectuals of the Canadian right may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Consistent Fraser Institute donors Charles and David Koch.
In 2011, the market-fundamentalist Fraser Institute continued to accept substantial funding from the U.S.-based Koch Brothers, the far-right New York billionaires who have helped bankroll the extremist American Tea Party.
A U.S. tax filing for a foundation controlled by Charles Koch (pronounced “coke”)
. . . → Read More: Alberta Diary: In 2011, Fraser Institute continued to take Koch Brothers donations and file tax returns claiming no political activity
By David Climenhaga, on January 1, 2013, at 2:08 pm The Dagny Taggarts, a synchronized skating team from Ottawa get ready to do their popular routine, “Where Is John Galt?” Defence Minister Joan Crockatt is in the front row, second from right. Below: Senator Tom Flanagan; U of C economics student Kim Jong-un, in full Calgary drag; Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk, ecstatic for his boss; and Nobel Prize winner Raj Sherman with the author. Actual events may not turn out exactly as predicted.
Why wait for 2013’s headlines when you can read them here on Alberta Dairy right now? In a spirit of transparency bordering on clairvoyance, Alberta Diary
. . . → Read More: Alberta Diary: Why wait? Read 2013’s shocking political headlines right now on Alberta Diary!
By Armine Yalnizyan, on December 21, 2012, at 8:24 am This article was published in an abridged form today in the National Post. http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/12/21/armine-yalnizyan-sorry-andrew-coyne-but-income-inequality-is-a-real-problem/ I like this opening better so I posted it here.
You couldn’t have made it through 2012 without running into a story about income inequality. Chances are, it made you think about how you fit into the story. That’s “entirely constructive”, as Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney called the awakening triggered by the global Occupy movement.
A year later, some people think it’s time you go back to sleep. A new debate is emerging in Canada: is inequality worth discussing at
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Why The Income Inequality Deniers Are Wrong
By david, on December 19, 2012, at 1:23 am Singing along: What we were promised by the Reform-Conservative platform. Below: What we got.
Alberta’s Wildrose Party blossomed at the edges of the same muddy spring whence sprang the federal Reform Party of Preston Manning and Stephen Harper.
As is well known, the Reform Party went on to engineer the hostile takeover in 2003 of the old Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, after renaming but not successfully re-branding itself as the Canadian Alliance.
By this mechanism the Reform Party evolved over a short time from a populist Prairie uprising into the most autocratic and secretive government in Canadian history, including
. . . → Read More: Alberta Diary: The Stephen Harper model for Wildrose power: promise free votes and deliver the Borg Hive
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Alberta Diary: Why wait? Read 2013’s shocking political headlines right now on Alberta Diary!
The Dagny Taggarts, a synchronized skating team from Ottawa get ready to do their popular routine, “Where Is John Galt?” Defence Minister Joan Crockatt is in the front row, second from right. Below: Senator Tom Flanagan; U of C economics student Kim Jong-un, in full Calgary drag; Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk, ecstatic for his boss; and Nobel Prize winner Raj Sherman with the author. Actual events may not turn out exactly as predicted.
Why wait for 2013’s headlines when you can read them here on Alberta Dairy right now? In a spirit of transparency bordering on clairvoyance, Alberta Diary
. . . → Read More: Alberta Diary: Why wait? Read 2013’s shocking political headlines right now on Alberta Diary!