POLICY PAPERS
Reinventing the Building of Schools
The Real Legacy of Public-Private-Partnership (P3) Schools in Nova Scotia Reinventing the Building of Schools revisits the history of public-private partnerships for school construction. Though the province's experience with P3's since the mid-1990s has been widely described as a failure, ...
Post-Secondary Tuition and Low-Income Access
© UNB. Post-Secondary Tuition and Low-Income Access discusses New Brunswick's Tuition Access Bursary program, which covers college and university tuition for the children of families earning under $60,000 per year. Author Patrick Webber's paper reviews numerous studies, surveys and reports ...
The Size and Cost of the Public Sector in Western Canada
The Size and Cost of the Public Sector in Western Canada authored by Rodney A. Clifton, Jackson Doughart, and Marco Navarro-Génie, examines the provincial and municipal public sectors in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. For 2015, the authors draw ...
13th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey
The 13th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2017 is published in collaboration with the Demographia group in Illinois, USA and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg. Authors Wendell Cox and Hugh Pavletich explain that many "best city" ...
Measuring Austerity in Atlantic Canada
Recurrent political debates about public finance often include exaggerated accusations of “austerity” when a government decides to reduce spending. Though the language of “imposing austerity” has found its greatest use in Europe, it is also found in North America and ...
The Size and Cost of the Public Sector in Atlantic Canada, 2015
Public sector employment is a major cost for provincial governments in Atlantic Canada. The Size and Cost of the Public Sector in Atlantic Canada, 2015 examines provincial public sectors in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New ...
Private Sector Investment in Atlantic Canada
By DAVID MURRELL and JACKSON DOUGHART • 07 Nov 2016 Private Sector Investment in Atlantic Canada examines several forms of capital investment, including machinery and equipment outlay, business non-residential structures and government capital spending. Capital investment is a leading indicator ...
COMMENTARIES
Food delivery apps user rate in Canada reached record level in May 2019, and likely expand after 2021
By Sylvain Charlebois (AIMS Senior Fellow) The user rate for food delivery apps has reach a record level in May 2019. A recent survey conducted byAngus Reid Global, in partnership with the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, suggests that ...
The cascading impacts of school storm days
By Dr. Paul W. Bennett (AIMS Author) Talk about the inordinate number of school snow days in the Maritimes never seems to go away. The current school year, it turned out, reflected the “new normal” in Nova Scotia with between ...
Markets, lower taxes the solution on healthcare queues
By Matthew Lau (AIMS Author) Without serious government course correction, Canada is headed for an ill-fated healthcare squeeze. The senior dependency ratio in Canada – which is the ratio of people 65 years and older relative to the working-age population ...
Is Canada’s food industry facing death by regulation?
By Sylvain Charlebois (AIMS Senior Fellow) Food industries need to be regulated. But the delicate balance between protecting the public and supporting industrial growth might have reached a tipping point in Canada. In the Western world, governments successfully play the ...
Education schools should follow the evidence and drop the fads
By Michael Zwaagstra (AIMS Fellow) In 1933, the retiring president of Harvard University, Lawrence Lowell, famously stated that his university’s school of education was “a kitten that ought to be drowned.” Of course, university presidents wouldn’t talk like this today, ...
Canada can only lose in a trade war with China
By Sylvain Charlebois (AIMS Senior Fellow) Canola was first, and now peas and soybeans. It was highly predictable. And given how things have progressed over the last five months, the situation can only escalate. The Canadian government has pledged to ...
Cape Breton and Fairness
By David MacKinnon (AIMS Senior Fellow) In recent months, a group named Nova Scotians for Equalization Fairness has been arranging demonstrations, holding public meetings and making presentations to the public. Unfortunately, this group is advocating a path that is ill ...