Climate change purity is expensive
Big infrastructure plans in Canada, the United States and the European Union place a lot of emphasis on renewable energy displacing coal, gas and petroleum. Yet little attention is given to the one vital element that makes all these ‘green’ energy transition plans for power plants and vehicles viable: practical and affordable energy storage. Solar…
Decoupling will be difficult and costly, but is a necessity
Several factors have induced Western governments and the firms they preside over to find substitute supply chains for the China-dominant ones they depend on. These factors include growing public revulsion at the repressive and persecutory policies the Chinese Communist Party has for its ethnic, religious and other minorities or critics; the increasingly aggressive expansionary moves…
Rising prices may be increasing their allure but there are considerable risks
The value of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and others recently hit new record highs, in the thousands of dollars per unit. This escalation has attracted more speculators, further boosting prices over the past several months. Much of this is the result of investors fearing they will miss out on a chance to profit. While…
Centerra is being held hostage by Kyrgyzstan but, fortunately, it is no longer part of a Crown corporation so taxpayers aren't on the hook
Centerra, a mid-size Canadian gold-mining company, is engaged in a legal and political dispute with the government of Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia with a chronically unstable and fractious political class and culture. Its main asset, the Kumtor mine, is in that troubled land and the source of roughly half of its…
The regulatory environment in Canada makes foreign expansion not only more attractive but necessary to avoid stagnation or decline
A bidding war erupted recently between Canada’s two mammoth and historic railways, Canadian National (CN) and archrival Canadian Pacific (CP), for the American railroad Kansas City Southern (KCS). KCS ultimately accepted CN’s US$30-billion bid after scrapping CP’s US$33.6-billion offer. This is all about KCS’s mid-American location and its extensive network in Mexico, where there’s considerable…
The observers of these phenomena are sober professionals who seek to understand what it is that has been detected and recorded
The venerable television program 60 Minutes aired a segment recently focused on a topic that has been examined before, but not with the same widespread receptivity and credibility. It had to do with UAPs. And the Pentagon, directed by the United States Congress, recently released its file on UAPs, or unidentified aerial phenomena. These sightings…
They are a bad idea and should be sold off
Reports, studies and analyses show that the essential character of state-owned enterprises, including Canadian Crown corporations, makes it impossible for them to have true independence or real profitability. These operations have inherent goals counter to the normal private sector pursuit of profit maximization. In the private sector, return on investment rewards shareholders for the risk…
What you tax more of, you get less of
Calls by self-identified progressives and others who purport to champion equity, compelling everyone to pay their fair share, have grown louder and more strident. It seems these social justice warriors have discovered previously unknown inner fiscal conservatism, with their usual zeal for redistribution and punishment for those who they deem have excessive wealth. It’s wealth…
Fed's bailout marks a return to the airline's status as a stratospheric ward of the state
In early April, the government of Canada announced it would support Air Canada through the rest of the lockdown-induced decline in air travel, with loans and, in a return to its previous status as a stratospheric ward of the state, $500 million in equity capital. It’s understandable that the government would want some chance of…
We should stop caving in to North American virtue signallers
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has launched the latest political hit job on a Canadian pipeline. Whitmer is targeting Enbridge’s Line 5, which runs from Alberta through the Great Lakes region to refineries and chemical plants in Sarnia, Ont. The Sarnia terminus sells to companies that make products that fuel cars, trucks, vans, ships and airplanes…
Locking in government bonds at current low interest rates, over extremely long terms, can help us manage our debt in challenging times
The massive debt Canada’s federal government and other governments around the world took on to face the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic is the elephant in the room. This debt could soon become intolerably hard to service, if interest rates revert to more historic levels or even escalate past those levels. Investors will demand higher…
Manitoba’s Opposition New Democratic Party proposes the creation of a new Crown corporation to provide high-speed internet service to rural and remote communities, particularly First Nations communities, in that province. This is a bad idea for several reasons. A host of private-sector and government organizations are launching enormous flotillas of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites to…
The Chinese government wants to dominate all other nations, seeking submission on its terms. We must resist
The vote by Canada’s Parliament to declare the actions of the Chinese government a genocide against the Uyghur people highlights the growing discordance between Western democracies and the increasingly repressive and aggressive Chinese regime. The Chinese government also engages in cultural repression, surveillance or discrimination against its Tibetan, Mongolian and Korean minorities. China has benefited…
Given what was known about Keystone XL, it’s hard to understand the decision-making the government undertook to buy into the scheme
The long-suffering citizens of Alberta recently learned that they’re on the hook for yet more billions of dollars via an ill-advised investment in an oil pipeline. The Keystone XL project was festooned with red flags well before the injection of hard-earned and now lost taxpayer funds. Political risk can be hard to quantify but it’s…
We need to increase personal income, improve living standards and pay down the mountain of debt
The federal government is preparing a budget to be unleashed on the public and the financial markets sometime in March. We can be terrified at the prospect of more huge debt taken on by our servants on Parliament Hill. Or we can hope they may take a more creative, constructive and growth-generating approach. Here are…
More than 70 years of Alberta prosperity could be in jeopardy. And the continued fixation and dependence on fossil fuels could bring disaster
Lack of diversification is a risky invitation to investment disaster. Very few institutional, corporate or individual investors would put their total net worth into one sector. Yet that’s just what Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Saskatchewan have done. The economies of these provinces are heavily dependent on the fortunes of the petroleum industry. Corporate and…
The Arctic, and all its alluring possibilities, is not part of the future as the energy and investment industries see it unfolding
Toronto-Dominion Bank announced recently it won’t loan money toward any oil and gas or related development in the Arctic. While this may elicit joy from the woke anti-fossil-fuel global warmists, this was in reality a very easy decision for TD. So too will it be for others like investment banks, institutional investors, and financial entities…
How do we sustain large deficits, wind them down and gradually slow the debt accumulation?
Ordinary Canadians have begun worrying about something that usually only ‘dismal scientists’ – i.e. economists – care about: our alarming federal and provincial deficits and exploding government debt. Putting an economy into lockdown was assuredly going to reduce tax revenues and increase transfers to individuals and businesses to ameliorate the devastation wrought by the COVID-19…
Government can do more by doing less, by unleashing the private sector
Federal government schemes and programs to ameliorate the devastation wrought by the ill-considered shutdown of the Canadian economy for nearly three months have focused on compensating individuals and businesses for being unemployed or shutting down. Little thought, thus far, has been given to how to relaunch the economy for a sustained recovery from COVID-19. The…
But a true recovery in oil prices will require an economic recovery, whose timing remains unclear
While there’s certainly carnage and woe in the oil and natural gas sectors at the moment, reports of the death of the industry are exaggerated. Many climate change activists and their sympathizers have been cheered by the dramatic drop in oil prices that coincided with, and were partly caused by, the COVID-19 pandemic. Prominent among…
Provincial governments need to be sober, disciplined, realistic and do whatever they can to not lose money for their citizens
While crude oil’s startling and unprecedented recent price plunge into negative territory was notable, it didn’t mean that producers were actually paying others to take oil off their hands. It did point to major problems the industry faces, however. In the short term, the foremost issue is weak demand. And it raised a significant problem…
Our health-care budgets were already greatly strained before the COVID-19 crisis; they’re completely blown out now
Two of the major issues arising from the current medical emergency and lockdown are how much it would cost to prepare for a similar crisis and how Canadians would pay for it (as well as pay for the one we’re enduring). The N95 particulate mask is deemed necessary to ensure that neither the wearer nor…
Cities are establishing taxes on electric cars and other low-emission vehicles to reduce traffic and raise infrastructure funds
The state of Oregon recently became the latest devotee of a variation of congestion fees. The system falls short, even if the goal is worthy. It’s a sort of tax on road use more commonly directed at motorists and commercial vehicle drivers who access the central area of a city. Those drivers presumably add to…
Our leaders should have ways to handle a public health disaster without throwing half the population into penury
Most of the nations in the developed world, including Canada, were unprepared for the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. So we need to examine what steps should be taken to forestall or substantially mitigate the next microbial conflagration. While the current main weapon – the medieval quarantine – might still be part of the future arsenal, more…
At the heart of the COVID-19 crisis sits the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp. and its low-income borrowers
The shutdowns ordered by Canadian governments to slow the spread of COVID-19 have caused unemployment to leap. And put mortgages in peril. Many of the millions of workers laid off have been low-income and lower-middle-income earners. They’re just the sort of people who qualify for home mortgages insured by the federal Canada Mortgage and Housing…
Climate warriors spend a great deal of time condemning current practices without offering realistic solutions
In the past several months, we’ve heard dire and angry imprecations and accusations from the new climate crusaders. They demand total obeisance to their escalating demands. Any critics to their approach to catastrophic global warming are denounced as deniers or heretics. A new religious-political-social movement has sprung out of this trend: Extinction Rebellion, with the…
The COVID-19 crisis has amplified the warning: dependence on Chinese products is a key vulnerability for Western nations
Many key pharmaceutical ingredients used in North America reportedly come from China or, in the case of generics, India. In turn, India imports key ingredients from China. So diverting imports from China to India might not reduce our dependence on Chinese manufacturers. In addition, China reserves the right to provide its citizens with vital drugs before…
Governments around the world have been tardy, negligent, dysfunctional or otherwise an impediment to an aggressive and successful outcome
While residents around the world deal with restrictions imposed to minimize transmission of COVID-19, many wonder how we got into a predicament where thousands die, millions are infected, and millions more lose their jobs or investment nest eggs. There were preliminary indications as far back as Nov. 17 that some people who frequented the wet…
We need tax reforms and other initiatives that will help spur entrepreneurial spirit and encourage investment
Canada is gradually losing its competitiveness – but it can be regained. According to the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), a graduate business school and research centre, we’re down three spots from 2018 to 13th. Canada is now ranked below the United States and Switzerland, as well as other energy-dominated nations such as Norway,…
The province's aversion to pipelines and its ban on fracking create serious problems. It's time to let free enterprise pave the way to a better future
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has suggested to Quebec that pipelines would prevent events like the recent propane shortage caused by the CN Rail strike. The lack of propane hampered harvest for Quebec farmers, and endangered users of propane heating in seniors residences, hospitals and mobile homes. Critics have noted pipelines don’t usually carry propane. But…