AIMS cited as model for community leadership
At a speech in Moncton, John Risley, a member of AIMS’ Advisory Council, called on the business community to step forward into a leadership role and push for innovation and accountability in public policy. In this excerpt published in the Chronicle Herald, Risley explains how measuring, reporting and adjusting results is the recipe for turning our economy around. He holds up AIMS’ High School report card as a prime example of how leadership in accountability does not have to come from the public sector in order to change the public sector. By setting and reporting standards AIMS is helping schools identify and respond to their weaknesses so that they can get better. It is this private leadership for the public good that Risley believes the business community must both endorse and aggressively pursue in order to achieve lasting change in this region.
Ecology, economy and justice
The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies presented two breakfast talks with one of the world’s foremost authorities on the impact of environmental activism - Paul Driessen.
Environmental activists stoke anxieties, oppose solutions; AIMS in the CB Post
Many Cape Breton residents, anxious to solve their long-festering tar ponds problem, are frustrated by the latest delays. They can take a measure of comfort from knowing they aren't alone in facing activists who stoke public anxieties, fault every proposed solution, yet offer no workable alternatives, ensuring that problems and health risks remain. In this piece to the CB Post, AIMS speaker Paul Driessen says it is time to demand solutions, not just continued carping that prevents progress in Nova Scotia and elsewhere in developed nations and the Third World.
Challenges ahead for Membertou Inc.’s business based model of aboriginal self-government
Membertou, a small Cape Breton Mi'kmaq community, is widely considered a leader when it comes to advancing itself in the mainstream economy. AIMS’ author Dr. Jacquelyn Thayer Scott, explains in this interview with the CB Post, however, that its future successes will depend on how it resolves a number of significant challenges – with succession and cultural protection as the two biggest concerns. "Deep suspicions remain about the 'corporate model' (for economic development) and among older band members the notion lingers that business development is a bad thing," says Scott.
Big energy projects falling out of favour
AIMS’ President Brian Lee Crowley sets the stage for a rethinking of the Lower Churchill Hydroelectirc project in this piece published across Newfoundland. The U.S. marketplace - the main market for electricity generated in Labrador - is demanding smaller, more environmentally friendly sources of energy, says Crowley. "These big hydroelectric megaprojects are not as attractive as they once were."
Just how “cheap ” are Canadian drugs? AIMS on CBC Radio
On the CBC Saint John radio morning show, AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley challenged the idea that Canadian price controls and patent protections are the chief reasons for "cheap drugs" on this side of the Canada-US border.