Book review: A unionist’s plea for banks and business
Fred McMahon reviews PAPER BOOM: WHY REAL PROSPERITY REQUIRES A NEW APPROACH TO CANADA'S ECONOMY By Jim Stanford of The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Sweeping away the coal curtain
The coal curtain is being swept away in Cape Breton, and maybe soon the steel wall - Cape Breton's subsidized steel industry - will come tumbling down. This should be a time of jubilee in Cape Breton, an occasion to pop champagne corks, not cry over split milk. Fred McMahon, 1999
Taking Ownership
The Atlantic fishery is hit by a major crisis about once every 10 years. Yet little has been done since the most recent crisis to resolve the industry’s underlying problems, a situation which calls out for fresh thinking. To help met this need, AIMS just published a book on the fishery, Taking Ownership: Property Rights and Fishery Management on the Atlantic Coast, to examine alternative regimes for the Atlantic fishery. It features contributions from some of the world’s leading experts. As well, AIMS organized late last year, in St. John’s, Newfoundland, a high level conference which brought leaders of industry, labour, government, and environmental groups together with researchers and academics to discuss alternatives for the Atlantic fishery. The following article reflects some of the new thinking explored in the book and at the conference.
Looking the Gift Horse in the Mouth
In AIMS' first book, Fred McMahon shows in a detailed and well-documented way what many people in the region had suspected for years, namely that the huge government presence in the region politicizes the economy, inflates the region's costs and leads people and businesses to look to government support rather than to their own abilities. He then goes on to show how orderly reform of federal transfers will help to overcome these challenges.