“Bullshit,” wrote philosopher Harry Frankfurt a few years ago, “is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.” Enter Danny Williams, Doc O’Keefe, and Tom Hann. The T’ree Amigos dismissed the Conference Board of Canada’s recent population projection for the province with the simple
Continue readingTag: demographics
The Sir Robert Bond Papers: Understanding Population Changes #nlpoli
It seems like Danny Williams can’t go two weeks without getting his mug on the news so it wasn’t surprising that on Monday the Old Man called the media together to unveil the latest name for his land development project south of Mount Pearl. He wants to call it Galway.
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Do High Tuition Fees Make for Good Public Policy?
This afternoon I gave a presentation to Professor Ted Jackson’s graduate seminar course on higher education, taught in Carleton University’s School of Public Policy and Administration. The link to my slide deck, titled “The Political Economy of Post-Secondary Education in Canada,” can be found here. Points I raised in the
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Toronto’s Wards By Population Density
These are Toronto’s current 44 wards listed in order of decreasing population density, expressed in number of people per square kilometre. The colours indicate which pre-amalgamation city a given ward is grouped under. Some wards cross these previous borders, such as ward 26, which covers both North York and East
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Toronto’s Wards By Population Density
These are Toronto’s current 44 wards listed in order of decreasing population density, expressed in number of people per square kilometre. The colours indicate which pre-amalgamation city a given ward is grouped under. Some wards cross thes…
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Toronto’s Wards By Population Density
These are Toronto’s current 44 wards listed in order of decreasing population density, expressed in number of people per square kilometre. The colours indicate which pre-amalgamation city a given ward is grouped under. Some wards cross these previous borders, such as ward 26, which covers both North York and East
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Homelessness Policy
This afternoon, I gave a presentation on public policy responding to homelessness in Canada, with a focus on the past decade. I gave the presentation at this year’s annual conference of the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association. Points I made in the presentation include the following: -Once inflation is accounted for,
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Boom and the Un-Boom #nlpoli
Ask people in the St. John’s business community about the economy and they are likely to have trouble holding back the grin long enough to get a few words out. Look around Capital City and you’ll see plenty of job vacancies in the restaurants and small shops. Meanwhile, some locals
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Demographics in pictures #nlpoli
If you look at nothing else this week, take a look at a comment by Matthew Kerby called “’Representative’ by population in Newfoundland and Labrador”. Before Kerby was a political scientist at the University of Ottawa, he practiced the craft at Memorial University. He still takes an interest in the
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Populations #nlpoli
Ross Reid has a new job. He used to be federal fisheries minister. Since 2003 or so, Ross has been a deputy minister in the provincial government. Lots of people got excited last week when Premier Kathy Dunderdale announced that Reid would be deputy minister responsible for the provincial government’s
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Creating a Baby Boom. Not. #nlpoli
Flip over to the Occupy NL blog and you’ll see a critique of some recent SRBP posts on the provincial government’s bonus cash for live babies program. Let’s summarise the critique and then go from there. While this summary will get you through this post, to be fair and to
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Fertility Rates: a different perspective #nlpoli
Via Occupy Newfoundland and Labrador, a different take on the success of the bootie call from the one presented in this corner recently. -srbp-
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Teens and 40s #nlpoli
As the last instalment in our survey of birth rates, let’s take a look at the group 15 to 19 and the other end of the scale for statistics, women aged 40-44 at the time of the child’s birth. The blue line is the number of births to mothers between
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The 30-Somethings #nlpoli
The number of babies born to mothers in their 30s in Newfoundland and Labrador has declined over the past couple of decades. But the drop isn’t as dramatic as the decline among the 20-somethings. What stands out in this chart is the way the older age cohort – 35-39 –
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The 20-Something Birth Rates #nlpoli
As we told you a couple of weeks ago, it doesn’t look like the provincial government’s policy of paying cash for live births produced any improvement in the birthrate in the province except for the year they announced the bonus cash. If you look at the number of births by
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Limits of Demography
Here is a piece I wrote for today’s Globe Economy Lab re the Department of Finance report on the costs of an aging society. The key point is that the mainstream doom and gloom projections of the costs of falling labour force growth ignore the positive impacts which can be
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Republican Party: SS Titanic and the coming iceberg
SS Republican aka Titanic The Tea Party is winning the battle to be captain on board the good ship Republican, but just as they are about to grasp the wheel and heel the ship even more over to starboard, some in the party have noticed one startling fact: There is
Continue readingcalgaryliberal.com: End of Summer Polls: Trends
Polling is a long haul game. Jitters of points inside margins of errors don’t showcase who has different levels of support or who is the newest front runner in the media past time of political horse races. So as an avid political watcher I take a step back and look
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Alberta-bound #nlpoli
This graph will likely cause some people to scratch their chins or heads. The reason is simple: it isn’t the story they’ve been told, namely the one that holds that all our ills of outmigration and the like vanished after 2003. In fact, if you look at it, outmigration from
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