In this commentary, Frontier Centre for Public Policy President Peter Holle makes the argument for eliminating provisions that allow unions to pay for political advertising campaigns from compulsory union dues.
James Buchanan was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in economics for his work on the public choice theory of economics. As his early writings were highly influential in the design of equalization programmes such as Canada’s, Buchanan is known as one of the “fathers of equalization”. His more recent work has highlighted the possibility that equalization programmes can be captured and destroyed by politics and bad design. He spoke at a conference on equalization co-sponsored by the Montreal Economic Institute, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Montreal on October 25th, 2001. Following this conference he sat down for an interview to discuss his changed perspectives on equalization.