Does Nova Scotia stifle innovation?
Disruptors fear province doesn’t welcome new ideas
MEDIA RELEASE: Broten Report a great start; requires immediate action from government says AIMS and economist
Halifax – A report commissioned by the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) and written by Dr. Kevin Milligan, Associate Professor, Vancouver School of Economics, suggests the recommendations of the seven-month-old Broten Review are steps in the right direction in terms of fairness in Nova Scotia`s tax system. According to Marco Navarro-Genie, AIMS president and [...]
MEDIA RELEASE: Save And Spend, In That Order
The recent drop in oil prices is an opportunity in disguise for Newfoundland and Labrador, and Atlantic Canada more generally. It’s an opportunity to step out of the intoxicating smoke of provincial resource revenue and say: “What on Earth were we thinking by spending all our oil revenue as fast it flowed in! Let’s get off this roller coaster and transform our oil resources into a permanent financial asset that will pay off in perpetuity.”
Alberta should save all of its resource revenue
It’s blasphemy, but when Peter Lougheed decided in 1976 to put 30 per cent of natural resource revenue into the Alberta Heritage Fund, he got it wrong. It should’ve been 100 per cent. In Lougheed’s defence, he got it a lot less wrong than the premiers who came after him, and he didn’t have the benefit of hindsight. The last 40 years on the resource revenue roller-coaster show that the best way to deal with the volatile and intergenerational nature of resource revenue is to transform it into a permanent financial asset that produces a steady stream of annual revenue.
A Good Problem to Have
Co-authored by Senior Fellow, Robert Roach, Research Associate, Jeff Collins, and AIMS President and CEO, Marco Navarro-Genie, the paper – A Good Problem to Have: Lessons for Atlantic Canada from Alberta’s Experience with Natural Resource Revenue – calls for stability in Atlantic Canada’s strategy to transform non-renewable resources into a permanent financial asset.
How the Maritimes Became Canada’s Incredible Shrinking Region
John Ibbitson writes about how the Maritimes became Canada’s incredible shrinking region. After decades of declining fortunes, the Maritime provinces now find themselves trapped in what one observer describes as “a perfect storm” of economic and demographic decline. But the real problem is the makeup of the population that remains. Every year – due to a weakening economy, a dearth of immigrants, and a population reluctant to face these problems – there are fewer workers to pay taxes and more old people in need of government services.
Atlantic Provinces Look to Set Standard Public Sector Wages
NB reporter Adam Huras discusses a new development in Atlantic Canada, wherein the four provinces have begun inquiring into whether standardized public sector wage scales could help rationalize public spending in the region and he cites figures outlined in an AIMS report from 2014.
PEI Golf Missing the Cut
Roughly 25 years ago, the province took a real shine to golf as a tool to draw tourists to P.E.I. With the sport booming across North America in the 1990s, the government decided to make golf development a centerpiece of its tourism and economic development strategies. A new research report from the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) concludes the efforts were largely a flop — and quite a costly one at that. The paper, called Short of the Green: Golf as an Economic Development tool on Prince Edward Island, states that the Crown corporation created specifically to operate provincially owned courses has lost money in 10 of the last 14 years.
AIMS Report Much Too Harsh on PEI Golf Industry
At one point in the early to mid-1990s on P.E.I., building a golf course was considered a licence to print money. A popular story that regularly made the rounds in those heady days was that a farmer went to the bank looking for a loan to expand his agricultural operation and was turned down. The farmer then asked about possible financing to build a golf course instead and the bank asked, “How much do you want?” The golf boom was in full bloom and nothing could stop it. A report released Tuesday by the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies provides a harsh assessment of our provincial government’s involvement over the years in P.E.I.’s golf industry, suggesting it was a poor investment which ended up costing the province millions. The study doesn’t mention the revenue generated by golf nor what our tourism industry would be without our courses. The study is both narrow in scope and often too critical.
Government Calculators Out of Whack
I don’t normally spend a lot of time taking reports from the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) as gospel. The think-tank — a registered charity — describes itself as providing “a distinctive Atlantic Canadian perspective on economic, political and social issues.” I mean, I read AIMS reports — I read everything — but it often seems to me that while the scholarship is fine, the choice of what’s to be studied seems to suit a particular business-based world view. Which probably isn’t surprising, given its funders. (Those same funders get income tax receipts, even in this world where charities that try to affect public policy — at least the ones whose work doesn’t dovetail with the federal Conservatives — seem to get quickly and mysteriously selected for audits by tax authorities). But more on that another day. This week, AIMS released a report on golf courses in P.E.I., and the thrust of the research essentially proves a bit of a truism about government investment in bu