Radio: National Childcare
Quebec’s $7/day rate structure for childcare is often touted as a model for Canada because it supposedly makes childcare affordable for Quebecers. In reality, it masks the costs with subsidy, and defers the cost onto others. Childcare operators can survive on $7/day, because they receive as much as five times that amount in subsidies directly from the provincial [...]
Radio: Fixing Undergraduate Education
Canadian universities should publish data that enable the public to evaluate institutional outcomes performance effectively. Our universities may be failing undergraduate students all across the country. At research oriented universities, between 20 % and 30% of first year students fail to proceed to second year, and fewer than 60% graduate within 6 years. Systematic disclosure of the number [...]
Radio: The Size and Cost of the Public Sector
Provincial public sector employment rates in the Atlantic region, relative to population, are higher than in the rest of Canada. Nationally in 2013, 17.8 % of all jobs were in the provincial public sector. By contrast, in the Atlantic provinces, this figure is 22.6%. Atlantic provincial governments could reduce the gap by half, or even by a quarter [...]
Radio: A New Economy
The development of the internet has challenged our traditional way of thinking about many things. Among which are wealth, value and entrepreneurship. Today, adventurous entrepreneurs are unlocking value from unused portions of their households or unused times for their vehicles. Naturally, we're referring to eBay, Uber and Airbnb. They have taken chunks in market share, unlocking billions in [...]
Radio: Global Education
A generation ago, Canada was one of a relatively privileged number of industrialized economies that could afford to provide its citizens with high quality, public education. Today, country's with low skilled and poor populations are rapidly modernizing and are making unprecedented progress in their education and training. When yesterday's generation first entered the workforce, it hardly occurred to [...]
Radio: Healthcare Reform Needs Citizens Voices
Canadians want better healthcare, but their participation in health reform is difficult. Ordinary citizens don't readily have useful information about waiting times, results of care, the rate of preventable mistakes in their local facilities or even their own health information. The way forward and the most immediate, actionable way would be to promote improvements in health literacy, granting [...]