aims

New thinking key to Newfoundland prosperity, an excerpt from Mark Milke’s new book, Tax Me I’m Canadian – Your Money and How Politicians Spend It and Australia looks to AIMS for analysis of Equalization.

Following the release of its award winning Definitely NOT the Romanow Report, AIMS collected highlights of the research completeted and assembled the second edition of Ideas matter. Featured on the cover is Swedish health care reformer Johan Hjertdvist.

AIMS launches ACOA WATCH, AIMS in La Presse on sustainable growth and more.

In its ongoing exploration of the similarities between the challenges Alaska faces and those here in Nova Scotia, the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) has again turned to AIMS for a clear perspective on the hurdles facing both economies. In this article, AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley, tells the ADN in an interview that the key challenge for Nova Scotia is creating something lasting from whatever natural gas is found. That means parlaying it perhaps into an oil-field services industry that can compete for work around the globe. As in Alaska, however, parochial demands threaten to gum up the works. For instance, some Nova Scotians demand that cheap gas be reserved for local homeowners and industries before any is exported, preferably at high prices. If government makes rules to appease those voices, it could repel an industry taking enormous risks.

Late last year the final report of the Independent Review of Commonwealth–State Funding was released in Australia. This review, sponsored by three state governments in Australia, was designed to review the current system of federal-state transfers in terms of economic efficiency, equity, and simplicity and transparency. In searching for analysis of comparative models of fiscal equalization between federal and state governments in a federation, the review commissioners looked to AIMS and our award winning equalization initiative. Specifically, they cited “Equalization Revisited” by Nobel Laureate James Buchanan, as it was presented during an event in Montreal that AIMS co-sponsored with the Montreal Economic Institute and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg.

Open and democratic societies find it difficult to rise to the moral and physical challenge of defending themselves against those who do not share their values. This is especially true when the threat is relatively abstract. Democratic Britain was unwilling to contemplate the horror of another war, while the Nazis re-armed. On the other hand, the West saw off the Soviet threat through decades of resolute determination to be strong enough to be militarily unassailable. By preparing for war we maintained the peace.

Already sterling international reputation "cemented"

In this article from La Presse, AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley argues Instead of being the source of environmental degradation, this competitive system has unleashed human ingenuity and generated the wealth that has allowed our planet to support far more human life than would have been thought possible even a century ago.

Here is what's new at AIMS, Atlantic Canada's Public Policy Think Tank

Two new Healthcare background papers - Improving Canadian Health Care: Better Ways to Finance Medicare, Medicare and User Fees: Unsafe at any Price? Plus AIMS in Maine on Canadian health care, AIMS Borderlines conference and Jack Granatstien comes for lunch.