AIMS On-Line for early November 2000
Here is a brief overview of just some of AIMS' activities and publications early November 2000
Here is a brief overview of just some of AIMS' activities and publications early November 2000
Tom Adams, Executive Director of Energy Probe examines the problems beseting Ontario Hydro, drawing out lessons for Atalntic Canada on how the regions power systems might be further liberalised.
Both Brian Tobin and Stockwell Day have been wooing Atlantic Canadians with promises to end the anti-development bias of the federal equalisation programme. In an op-ed piece in the Globe and Mail, AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley argues that they're on the right track, but neither has gone nearly far enough in their plans to fix equalisation's perverse effects.
How will competition, deregulation and privatization in the continental electricity market affect us?
Here is the Dow Jones News Service report on Tom Adams' keynote speech at Plugging in Atlantic Canada.
The financial conflicts of interest that politicians occasionally find themselves in, and that so entertain the press, are minor compared to the conflicts their departments enter into by routinely both regulating and financing, insuring and promoting industry. From the Westray mine disaster, through aquaculture, to genetically-modified foods, this conflict in roles only leads to trouble. If governments want to regulate, they should only regulate. If they want to do more, they should hand over the regulatory job to some other agency.
About 80,000 cubic meters of fresh water flows out of Canada every second and into the ocean or across the border. Taking some small part of it and selling it for a good price hardly seems high treason. After all, every barrel of oil and pound of zinc Canada produces and sells is gone forever. Yet those businesses are perfectly respectable, while realizing some economic benefit from a properly managed renewable resource like water, is today thought to be profoundly unCanadian.
More young people in Atlantic Canada dropped off the employment insurance (EI) rolls thanks to the federal government's “tightening” of the program's rules in the 1990s, according to a Halifax-based think-tank. As a result, fewer young Atlantic Canadians are choosing seasonal work in the construction, mining, fishing and forestry sectors. Increasing numbers are moving into long-term employment in the managerial, natural sciences and education sectors. And many are staying in high school or going on to post-secondary institutions.
In an op-ed piece in the National Post, AIMS Communication Director Peter Fenwick sets out the findings of the Institute's new paper on the EI reforms of the mid-1990s, Beyond a hard place. He argues that the reforms have encouraged young people in Atlantic Canada to improve their education and to choose jobs with a brighter future than seasonal work. Yet the federal government's roll-back of some of the key aspects of that earlier reform puts that progress at risk.
Employment Insurance reform encouraged education