Again in last night’s third and final US Presidential debate, Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry, denounced the Bush administration for not permitting the re-importation of pharmaceuticals from Canada. In this piece for the Globe and Mail, AIMS’ author Dr. Brian Ferguson, a noted health economist, explains the economic principles and market realities that make re-importation pure fantasy as a means to control US drug prices.
October 11, 2004, Wiliam Kristol opened the Grano series with "Kerry's Best Hope to beat Bush is to offer an Iraq alternative. Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, worked in the White House of George Bush Sr. The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies has been a partner since the series inception.
AIMS in partnership with Tech Central Station and the Toronto Insurance Conference hosted Risk: Regulation & Reality, a conference exploring the role and influence of risk in our society.
Are rising tuition fees the barrier to low income students that they are so often portrayed to be? Hardly, says AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley, and the facts back him up. In stark contrast to recent assertions by student advocates, Statistics Canada research demonstrates not only a quite manageable student debt load (47% of all students graduate with a first degree debt-free) and a narrowing gap in the percentage of high and low income students entering university. Of course we can do better in helping students pay for their own education, but lowering tuition fees is not the answer. Read this piece to find out more.
Cheap drugs, unaccountable environmental activists, a Prime Minister who squanders his fiscal legacy, states and provinces pursuing wrongheaded development policies and cities looking for handouts all get some attention from AIMS in this week's newsletter.
At a speech in Moncton, John Risley, a member of AIMS’ Advisory Council, called on the business community to step forward into a leadership role and push for innovation and accountability in public policy. In this excerpt published in the Chronicle Herald, Risley explains how measuring, reporting and adjusting results is the recipe for turning our economy around. He holds up AIMS’ High School report card as a prime example of how leadership in accountability does not have to come from the public sector in order to change the public sector. By setting and reporting standards AIMS is helping schools identify and respond to their weaknesses so that they can get better. It is this private leadership for the public good that Risley believes the business community must both endorse and aggressively pursue in order to achieve lasting change in this region.
The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies presented two breakfast talks with one of the world’s foremost authorities on the impact of environmental activism - Paul Driessen.
Many Cape Breton residents, anxious to solve their long-festering tar ponds problem, are frustrated by the latest delays. They can take a measure of comfort from knowing they aren't alone in facing activists who stoke public anxieties, fault every proposed solution, yet offer no workable alternatives, ensuring that problems and health risks remain. In this piece to the CB Post, AIMS speaker Paul Driessen says it is time to demand solutions, not just continued carping that prevents progress in Nova Scotia and elsewhere in developed nations and the Third World.
Membertou, a small Cape Breton Mi'kmaq community, is widely considered a leader when it comes to advancing itself in the mainstream economy. AIMS’ author Dr. Jacquelyn Thayer Scott, explains in this interview with the CB Post, however, that its future successes will depend on how it resolves a number of significant challenges – with succession and cultural protection as the two biggest concerns. "Deep suspicions remain about the 'corporate model' (for economic development) and among older band members the notion lingers that business development is a bad thing," says Scott.
AIMS’ President Brian Lee Crowley sets the stage for a rethinking of the Lower Churchill Hydroelectirc project in this piece published across Newfoundland. The U.S. marketplace - the main market for electricity generated in Labrador - is demanding smaller, more environmentally friendly sources of energy, says Crowley. "These big hydroelectric megaprojects are not as attractive as they once were."