Last month's federal budget renewed one of Canada's most sacred policy cows -- our $10-billion equalization program -- for another five years. The second of a three-part series looks at how equalization doesn't work Down Under.
In 2002, AIMS, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (FCPP) and the Montreal Economic Institute collaborated on AIMS’ major “Equalization Initiative”, designed to draw the attention of Canadians to the inequities, inefficiencies and perverse incentives contained within our country’s equalization program. In a series of newpaper articles and published commentary, the Frontier centre for Public Policy advances the debate, using example not only in Canada, but Sweden, Belgium and Australia.
Last month's federal budget renewed one of Canada's most sacred policy cows -- our $10-billion equalization program -- for another five years. The first of a three-part series looks at how equalization locks "have-not" provinces into enormous welfare traps.
Media was quick to respond to the release of AIMS second publication of ACOA Watch: Locking Up the Pork Barrel. In two articles, one from the Ottawa Bureau of the Halifax Chronicle Herald and another appearing in the New Brunswick Telegraph Journal, AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley outlines the importance of the C.D. Howe research on the political motivation behind ACOA spending. According to the figures released in Brooking No Favourites by Jack Mintz and Michael Smart and the subsequent AIMS document ACOA Watch, the total of grants and contributions from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency peak just before the federal election calls.
Media was quick to respond to the release of AIMS second publication of ACOA Watch: Locking Up the Pork Barrel. In two articles, one from the Ottawa Bureau of the Halifax Chronicle Herald and another appearing in the New Brunswick Telegraph Journal, AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley outlines the importance of the C.D. Howe research on the political motivation behind ACOA spending. According to the figures released in Brooking No Favourites by Jack Mintz and Michael Smart and the subsequent AIMS document ACOA Watch, the total of grants and contributions from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency peak just before the federal election calls.
Examines new evidence of the politicization of ACOA spending
Nova Scotia's unemployment rate rose in November, but the reasons hold promise for the provincial economy. Statistic Canada reported the province's unemployment rate last month rose to 10.1 per cent, up from October's 9.5. The national trend rate fell slightly to 7.5. the provincial economy actually added 6,000 jobs -- most of them part-time -- in November, while losing another 3,000, a net gain of 3,000. But more importantly, another 6,300 people joined the workforce, driving up the participation rate. Brian Lee Crowley, president of the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies says the fact that more people have entered the workforce is a positive sign for the province.
Don McIver, Director of Research AIMS presentation to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance
Atlantic Canada can be put back onto the road to growth. Lower taxes and a favourable business climate will be central to such a strategy. But many of the well-meaning but destructive old government programmes that reward dependence and obstruct growth will have to go first.
AIMS recent release of ACOA Watch has reinvigorated the debate surrounding the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. In a frank interview with the Saint John Telegraph Journal, John Crosbie, who was once the minister responsible for ACOA in the early 1990s, argued it's time to look at phasing out Ottawa's principal agency for economic development in Atlantic Canada. "It's time for new and different initiatives to be tried because what we have been doing hasn't been that tremendously effective"