Who was Barbara Mitchell?
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Time to Reform the Canada Health Act

Time To Reform the Canada Health Act is a new essay, part of the Institute’s series on federal policy reforms, that highlights how the act has led to poor performance and high costs in provincial health-care systems, and suggests reforms that would allow the provinces to provide better universal health care.

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GDP Growth Unadjusted for Population Change—a Misleading Measure of Canada’s Economic Progress finds that due to large differences in population growth among developed countries, and Canada’s recent immigration-fuelled population surge, it’s now more useful to use per-person GDP to measure economic performance instead of overall GDP growth.

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Canada’s Rising Personal Tax Rates and Falling Tax Competitiveness, 2024

Canada’s Rising Personal Tax Rates and Falling Tax Competitiveness, 2024 is a new study that finds recent personal income tax rate increases at the federal and provincial levels have helped widen the income tax rate gap between the U.S. and Canada—among all 61 provinces and states, at $50,000 of annual income, the top 10 highest combined (federal plus provincial/state) personal income tax rates are in nine Canadian provinces—with all provinces in the top 15.

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Three Non-Economic Challenges Facing the Renewable-Energy Transition

Three Non-Economic Challenges Facing the Renewable-Energy Transition is a new study that finds although some costs associated with the transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewables are declining, significant barriers still remain. For example, the large amount of land required for solar and wind power generation, and the significant increase in mining activity and refinement capabilities required to build the wind turbines, solar panels, and energy storage systems.

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Undoing Alberta’s Personal Income Tax Hikes

Undoing Alberta’s Personal Income Tax Hikes is a new study that finds reversing the 2015 provincial personal income tax rate increases and instituting a flat eight per cent tax rate would help restore Alberta’s tax advantage while saving taxpayers $1,573 a year, on average.

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Can the Carbon Tax Be Reformed or Not?

As the federal carbon tax continues to rise, two new essays— Reforming the Federal Government's Carbon Tax Plan and Carbon Tax Is Beyond Redemption—make two opposing arguments, to retain the tax (after fixing it) and to scrap it.

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The Size of Government in Canada in 2022

The Size of Government in Canada in 2022 measures federal, provincial, and local government spending in each province as a share of the economy (GDP) from 2007 to 2022 (the most recent year of comparable data) finding that government size grew in every province except Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan during that period. In 2022, the size of government relative to the economy as a whole across Canada ranged from a low of 26.8 per cent in Alberta to a high of 63 per cent in Nova Scotia--and was 40.5 of Canada’s total economy.

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The Role of Natural Resources in British Columbia's Economy

The Role of Natural Resources in British Columbia’s Economy, by Senior Fellow Philip Cross, is the first essay in a new series looking at public policy in B.C. This essay quantifies the important role natural resources play in British Columbia’s economy, including the impact on both gross domestic product and employment.

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