19th January, 2010

Summary: Last week, the Attorney-General of Ontario refused compensation to two men who spent 10 years in prison for crimes they did not committ. The attorney-general based his decision on the fact that while the authorities may have been mistaken, they nonetheless acted with integrity and in the public interest. The National Post argues that this is no excuse for denying compensation to those who have been wrongfully imprisoned; in such cases, compensation should be mandatory.

Excerpt: “No one needs to be blamed. Prosecutors and peace officers may still be assumed to have acted in good faith even if their actions led to an erroneous result. But innocent citizens who end up deprived of their liberty in such cases are not bad-faith actors, either. Why should they have to pay for the Crown’s mistakes?”

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19th January, 2010

Summary: The recent bail-out of major banks by federal governments is causing some to call for restrictions on executives’ pay. Those who run the Montreal Economics Institute are wary of such proposals. They believe that government inteference will reduce the effectiveness of a free market for executives.

Excerpt: “When, under pressure from those critics, governments try to replace supply and demand in setting remuneration by other arbitrary rules, they distort the most important mechanism by which firms can influence the choice of their executives and their overall governance structure.”

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15th January, 2010

Summary: Don Dewees, a professor of economics and law at the University of Toronto, believes that citizens are not paying enough for their electricity. He claims that increasing the price is the only way to promote greener energy generation as well as pay for new capacity.

Excerpt: “The bottom line is that current electricity prices do not reflect electricity’s environmental effects or the costs of Green Energy Act policies. Reforming pricing so peak period prices reflect environmental costs and the cost of new generation facilities can move us toward an environmentally and financially responsible electricity future.”

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16th January, 2010

Summary: The Canadian government has remained firm in its decision to pull the bulk of Canadian forces out of Afghanistan by 2011. Conrad Black sees this as a mistake. He believes that it would not be prudent to pull out at a time when the United States is finally deploying the forces necessary to win the conflict. Canada should remain past 2011 in support of this new American surge.

Excerpt: “Canada should remain at present strength in Afghanistan until President Obama’s proposed initiation of de-escalation in 18 months. Following that period, we would then determine our future policy, independently of the United States, but simultaneously.”

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13th January, 2010

Summary: The B.C. First Nations Forestry council has said that it will use the Vancouver Olympic games as an opportunity to showcase the plight of aboriginal people in Canada after being refused millions of dollars in government grants. Gary Mason claims that this attitude is killing the prospects for prosperity in First Nations communities. He praises the independent economic efforts of some Native communities and calls for the end to economically stifling “dependency spending.”

Excerpt: “Let’s face it: Dependency spending doesn’t work. That’s surely been proved by now. And many of the more enlightened native leaders in Canada understand that. The way to halt the cycle of welfare addiction, with the societal and health-related issues it promotes, is through the stability provided by economic independence.”

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January 12th, 2010

Summary: The Montreal Gazette criticizes the federal government’s lack of new funding for scientific research, particularly that on climate change. It claims that the result has been an exodus of researchers to other countries where funding is available. The paper fears that this will seriously damage Canada’s presence in the scientific community.

Excerpt: “This time last year, Canadian scientists warned that federal government funding cuts to research grants would trigger a brain drain to the United States.Today, the brain drain is well underway, particularly in the field of climate-change research, according to scientists interviewed in La Presse this week.”

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Sunday 10th January, 2010

Summary: The prorogation of parliament at the PM’s request has led many to wonder if changes to the system are necessary. Political science professor Andrew Heard suggests that such a request should only be put to the Governor-General with the consent of the House.

Excerpt: “It is time to change the rules and stipulate that no prime minister can advise the prorogation or dissolution of Parliament without a vote to do so in the House of Commons. This is not as radical a suggestion as it may sound, as the British government proposed in 2007 that dissolution should only follow a vote in the Commons.”

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January 7th, 2010

Summary: Prime minister Stephen Harper’s request for a prorogation of parliament has caught the eye of one of the world’s most famous newspapers. In a stinging editorial this week, the Economist calls Harper’s move self-serving and a blow to Canadian democracy.

Excerpt: “Never mind what his spin doctors say: Mr Harper’s move looks like naked self-interest. His officials faced grilling by parliamentary committees over whether they misled the House of Commons in denying knowledge that detainees handed over to the local authorities by Canadian troops in Afghanistan were being tortured. The government would also have come under fire for its lack of policies to curb Canada’s abundant carbon emissions. Prorogation means that such committees—which carry out the essential democratic task of scrutinising government—will have to be formed anew in March.”

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Friday January 8th, 2010

Summary: This week’s tragic death of an 11-year-old boy on the Shamattawa reserve in Manitoba has once again exposed the dysfunctional nature of many of Canada’s First Nations reserves. The National Post calls on the government to end support for the reserve system.

Excerpt: ”Does this sound like the sort of place that Canadian taxpayers should be bankrolling with the billions of dollars we spend on native programs every year? Or maybe, just maybe, would it perhaps be a better idea to integrate these people into the First World, a place with professional firefighters and child care workers, working phone lines and … reasons for living?”

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Wednesday January 6th, 2010

Summary: For a long time the federal government has funded NGOs as one way of executing its foreign development goals. Margret Wente argues, however, that the heavy politicization of many of these NGOs makes funding them inappropriate and sees nothing wrong with the government halting funds to particular groups.

Excerpt: “I’m certainly not opposed to the existence of groups that denounce the neo-liberal agenda, run radical boot camps, declare carbon holidays in the name of God or think Israel is the worst country on Earth. I just don’t think they should do it with our money. If they’ve got causes they believe in, good for them. Just let them pay for it themselves, like the rest of us.”

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