Port-Ability
As a gateway to North America for world container traffic, the port of Halifax is dying a slow, lingering death. For the past ten years, its share of the North Atlantic market has stagnated. This stagnation has been caused by a failure to achieve real privatization in port governance. Despite supposed efforts at commercialization of ports in Canada, the federal government retains strict centralized control on ports and port policy. This is a drag on innovation, efficiency, and investment.
Atlantic Petroleum Royalties
Since Atlantic Canadian offshore oil and gas production became a reality in the 1990s, criticism of the royalty regimes and associated agreements has been a regular occurrence in both the media and the respective provincial legislatures. As a result, the public is subject to considerable uncertainty and anxiety about whether returns from resource exploitation are fair.
The cruel hand of equalization
The time has never been better for the Atlantic provinces to lessen their dependence on federal transfers and to become masters of their own fate. Energy prices are high, shortages are emerging in Canada's major U.S. markets, and the Prime Minister has responded favourably to U.S. requests to speed up the development of new energy supplies. Yet, on average, about 40% of provincial budgets in the four Atlantic provinces still come from federal transfers, most in the form of equalization. AIMS President Brian Crowley and AIMS author Ken Boessenkool outline a straightforward solution to this dilemma in this op-ed piece published in The National Post. Removing nonrenewable natural resources from the equalization formula would provide the Atlantic provinces with the incentive to rely on natural resources development as a centrepiece of their economic strategy in place of pleading for larger transfers from equalization. Gone would be the days when an Atlantic province might forfeit a nickel
AIMS major generator of new policy thinking: Michael Bliss
Michael Bliss, a distinguished Canadian historian and policy thinker recently expressed his concern that the absence of strong party competition at the federal level means that political parties are not generating the renewal in policy thinking Canada needs. One of the alternative sources of fresh thinking that he sees filling that vacuum is a handful of national public policy institutes, including AIMS. Bliss says that these think-tanks are among the very few groups capable of generating the energy Canada needs to renew itself politically. Fortunately, people with new political ideas have not stopped thinking and writing, they have simply turned to think-tanks as they have turned away from partisan politics or government service.
…and the Twain Shall Meet Analysts from Eastern and Western Canada Agree on Need to Change Equalization
Emphasis must be on building Atlantic region’s capacity to pay its own way.
AIMS On-Line for the end of May 2001
Here is what's new at AIMS this week - Atlantic Canada's public policy think tank