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1. Canada has lost its competitive advantage over the U.S.

   Say you are a store owner and your competitor across the street offers everything at lower price and higher quality, well, you’re in trouble. If your competitor was far on the other side of the city, things might be a bit better. But ...

2. Productivity accountants miss widespread magic

   “Any sufficiently advanced technology,” said the science/science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, “is indistinguishable from magic.” I get that quote from the podcast of The John Batchelor Show, where a tech company uses it in its ...

3. Competitiveness by the numbers is only partly helpful

   The self-appointed but now also semi-institutionalized World Economic Forum, progenitor of “Davos Man,” published its Global Competitiveness Report for 2018 this week. The United States came first, scoring 85.6 points out of a possible ...

4. This year, Canadians celebrate Tax Freedom Day today—June 10

   This year Canadians celebrate Tax Freedom Day on June 10. That means if you paid your annual tax bill up front, you’d give government every dollar you earned before Tax Freedom Day. It’s only from June 10 onward that you’re finally ...

5. Headlines fuel exaggerated concerns about household debt

   “Canada’s household debt burden hits record,” read a recent Globe and Mail headline. It’s a headline familiar to many Canadians. In fact, it’s repeated so often that you can be forgiven if you think household debt in this country is out ...

6. Provincial government net debt up 89% in less than a decade

   After a lull spanning the first decade of the 21st century, it seems that provincial government debt is again on the rise. Based on figures compiled from the Federal Fiscal Reference Tables and plotted in the first chart below, total ...

7. Happy 150th to one of the world's most demonstrably successful societies

   I was 15 when Canada turned 100. It was a very exciting time. Expo 67 was underway. The world seemed to be coming to Montreal, where I was growing up. There was background trepidation about the separatist movement in Quebec and the state ...

8. Secret ballot vote for union certification empowers workers, promotes democratic principles

   Canada’s Senate may not always live up to its ideal of being the chamber of “sober second thought,” but from time to time Senators can contribute to better policy outcomes by getting their counterparts in the House of Commons to ...

9. William Watson: Was Stuart McLean, national treasure, also a public good?

   I was not an early fan of Stuart McLean. I listened live to his famous gift of a cockroach to Peter Gzowski on Gzowski’s retirement show and thought it was silly, as, frankly, Gzowski seemed to, as well. And when The Vinyl Café first ...

10. Canada can improve cost of doing business

    A recent issue of the Economist magazine showers high praise on Canada. It says we place second of sixty in the Best Countries index, second of 55 in the Most Reputable Countries ranking, and tenth of 163 in the Good Country index. We ...