POLICY PAPERS

Rethinking Student Job Subsidies: The Case For Regional Equity in the Canada Summer Jobs Program

The Canada Summer Jobs Program is the federal government’s primary initiative for subsidizing work for the student-age population during off months at educational institutions. Recently, the program has come under scrutiny for Ottawa’s decision to impose a values test on ...
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/ / Economic Development, economics, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Policy Papers, Prince Edward Island

Missing in Action: School Storm Days, Student Absenteeism and the Workplace

Missing in Action: School Storm Days, Student Absenteeism and the Workplace by Dr. Paul Bennett makes several recommendations to better serve the education and parents of school-age children such as adapting instructional time as a protected a provincial education priority, ...
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/ / AIMS, Education, education reform, Policy Papers

A New Canadian Partnership: The promising opportunity for interprovincial free trade

As Canadians, we earn our keep by trading. Millions of Canadian jobs contribute to our international trade, and those jobs, in turn, rely on Canadian businesses having secure access to many foreign markets. Canadians have an even longer history of ...
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/ / AIMS, Alcohol Sales, business, Constitution, Economic Development, economics, Policy Papers

Raising the bar and closing the gap: schools, income, and student success

Student performance can be highly varied in school systems and differences among children and teens from different classes or groups, marked by income, ethnic, or racial disparities, are commonly termed the ‘achievement gap.’ While the school board and schools have ...
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/ / AIMS, business, Education, Nova Scotia, Policy Papers

Opening the Taps

Craft brewing is a burgeoning industry in Atlantic Canada, yet while the number of small breweries has expanded in the last decade, Atlantic Canadian craft brewers claim that their businesses are hampered by bad government policies. AIMS' latest study Opening the ...
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/ / AIMS, Alcohol Sales, Atlantica, business, Business investments, Constitution, Economic Development, economics, Entrepreneurship, federal government, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Policy Papers

Dearth of Opportunity: Tax Burden and Youth Outmigration in Atlantic Canada

Young residents of all four Atlantic provinces have made clear for decades that the best economic opportunities lie outside their home province. For every year since 1985-1986, more young people in their early 20s moved out of each Atlantic province ...
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/ / AIMS, Economic Development, economics, Immigration, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Policy Papers

Fair and Equal Representation: Nova Scotia’s Electoral Boundaries Dispute

Across Canada, by far the most common subject of possible reform is the voting system, specifically changes to the so-called "electoral formula." The two main alternatives that have been advanced in Canada are proportional representation and ranked voting. These correspond to ...
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/ / Policy Papers
COMMENTARIES

Newfoundland and Labrador faces fiscal crisis, other provinces should take note

By Ben Eisen and Alex Whalen Among the many challenges emerging from the COVID-19 crisis, a worrying story has emerged from Newfoundland and Labrador and other provincial governments across the country should take notice.On March 20, Newfoundland Premier Dwight Ball ...
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/ / Newfoundland, Op-ed

Employers must be allowed to temporarily lay off workers during COVID crisis

Appeared in National Newswatch, March 27, 2020 By Alex Whalen and Niels Veldhuis Aside from the enormous health-related challenges due to the COVID-19 virus, employers and workers are feeling major economic pain with job loss, reduced income and revenue. The ...
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/ / Labour Market, Op-ed

New Brunswick budget tackles debt but eschews meaningful tax relief

Appeared in the Fredericton Daily Gleaner, March 16, 2020 By Jake Fuss and Alex Whalen Last week, the Higgs government tabled its 2020 budget. While the future of this government remains unknown, the budget highlights some of the important challenges ...
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/ / New Brunswick, Op-ed

Federal government making up fiscal rules on the fly

Appeared in Calgary's Business, January 5, 2020By Alex Whalen and Jake Fuss Last month, before the holidays, the Trudeau government released its fall economic update, which revealed—among other issues—that Canada’s federal debt-to-GDP ratio increased, meaning Canada’s debt has grown faster ...
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/ / federal government, Op-ed

Nova Scotia’s health-care wait times among longest in Canada

Appeared in the Chronicle Herald, December 24, 2019By Bacchus Barua and Alex Whalen Nova Scotians are worried about health care—and rightly so, as the province’s wait times are among the longest in the country. According to a new study from ...
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/ / Healthcare, Op-ed

New Brunswick’s high level of education spending produces relatively poor student performance

Appeared in the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal, December 22, 2019By Tegan Hill and Alex Whalen Policymakers in New Brunswick too often take the mistaken view that more spending on education means better results. In reality, the province spends well above the ...
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/ / Education, education reform, Op-ed

Vaping and Teen Health: How Kids Got Hooked and Schools Got Caught Off-Guard

By Paul W. Bennett (AIMS Education Fellow) A New Brunswick principal, Brad Sturgeon of Fredericton’s Leo Hayes High School, has broken the silence and rung the alarm bell over the rapid spread of vaping among students – before, after and ...
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/ / Education, Healthcare, Op-ed