School ratings raise hackles
Hopefully, future discussion of the AIMS rankings will shed a little less heat, and a little more light, on the education system.
Report takes aim at high schools
In a strong editorial endorsement of AIMS' new high school report card, Grading Our Future, the Editorial Board of the St. John’s Telegram gently chides the report’s critics in the educational establishment for their “ostrich-like” attitude in counselling parents to refuse even to read the document. And how should Newfoundlanders and Atlantic Canadians regard the High School Report Card? The editorial argues that, …the study, like or lump it, is an extensive and expensive effort, and the think-tank should be congratulated for its initiative. There is great value in talking about what makes schools good or bad, and looking at ways that various schools can learn about their comparative strengths and weaknesses, and, as part of that, how they can improve. A most AIMS-like conclusion…
School ratings a welcome tool
We say: N.B. should adopt and encourage the approach to evaluating the education system that the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies has initiated
Regulation not answer to high fuel prices
As AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley writes in his bi-monthly newspaper column, everyone hates paying high prices for gasoline and heating oil. They hit the poor harder than everybody else; they wreak havoc with family and business budgets. Perhaps worst of all, they seem to happen without rhyme or reason, like bolts of lightning out of a clear winter sky. Quite understandably, then, these price rises provoke fear, anger and suspicion of the oil and gas companies that are their authors. But before we rush off to embrace the responses that many people propose to solve this problem, we had better be sure exactly what the problem is and what all the consequences would be of, say, letting governments fix the price of gas.
Health deal delays real reforms: Our politicians would do well to look at the Swedes, who made their model work
Two articles in recent days have sung the praises of AIMS' work in communicating to Canadian audiences Sweden's success in bringing consumer choice and accountability to publicly-funded health care. And in Alberta, Edmonton Journal columnist and National Post Editorial Board member Lorne Gunter also congratulates AIMS and other policy institutes that have worked to bring the Swedish story to Canada. According to Gunter, The point is, there are not merely two models of health care -- a state monopoly or laissez-faire. There are dozens of models around the world that successfully combine public and private elements, while increasing patient choice and service, and keeping costs in check. It is well past time our politicians considered them.
Brian Lee Crowley discusses federal budget on CBC
John Manley brought down his first budget as Minister of Finance on February 18, 2003. After a decade of wrestling with the deficit, the Liberals government has returned to more agressive spending. This interview with Brian Lee Crowley, President of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies and Bruce Campbell, the Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives was heard on the CBC Radio One program “The Current” on February 18, 2003.
Stockholm syndrome
Two articles in recent days have sung the praises of AIMS' work in communicating to Canadian audiences Sweden's success in bringing consumer choice and accountability to publicly-funded health care. William Watson, editorializing in the Financial Post, congratulated AIMS, writing: The Swedes have grasped the crucial point that still escapes so many Canadian health-care decision-makers, namely, that the state can purchase health care for all without providing health care for anyone.
New thinking key to Newfoundland prosperity
Newfoundland & Labrador’s Royal Commission on Renewing and Strengthening our Place in Canada is popularly known as the Blame Canada Commission. In this column AIMS President, Brian Lee Crowley, outlines how Ottawa could significantly address the areas where it does, in fact, bear an important share of the blame for Newfoundland’s woes.
No Boom Yet – Like Alaska, Canadian province hopes for a natural gas fortune
In its ongoing exploration of the similarities between the challenges Alaska faces and those here in Nova Scotia, the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) has again turned to AIMS for a clear perspective on the hurdles facing both economies. In this article, AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley, tells the ADN in an interview that the key challenge for Nova Scotia is creating something lasting from whatever natural gas is found. That means parlaying it perhaps into an oil-field services industry that can compete for work around the globe. As in Alaska, however, parochial demands threaten to gum up the works. For instance, some Nova Scotians demand that cheap gas be reserved for local homeowners and industries before any is exported, preferably at high prices. If government makes rules to appease those voices, it could repel an industry taking enormous risks.
Pay now or later to resolve the question of Saddam Hussein?
Open and democratic societies find it difficult to rise to the moral and physical challenge of defending themselves against those who do not share their values. This is especially true when the threat is relatively abstract. Democratic Britain was unwilling to contemplate the horror of another war, while the Nazis re-armed. On the other hand, the West saw off the Soviet threat through decades of resolute determination to be strong enough to be militarily unassailable. By preparing for war we maintained the peace.