This is my latest column for Canadian Business magazine. Giorgio, a hard-working, smart-as-a-whip University of Toronto student, asked me a great question after a recent guest lecture: What if the…
Thankfully the federal budget has started to fill in some of the details of its latest round of cuts. In particular, it now estimates 19,200 positions lost due to its…
You’ve likely seen at least one list, published in a newspaper’s ‘business’ section, of tips for how to manage that unruly influx of “young punks” wreaking havoc on workplaces around…
Last Monday, BC teachers held a Day of Action in communities across the province to protest the BC government’s decision to legislate a contract and put an end to their…
A shorter version of this article appears today at Economy Lab, the Globe and Mail’s on-line business feature. Capitalism has entered an ugly new era, one that may work well…
US_Chamber_of_Commerce_logo-740806.jpg The U.S. Chamber of Commerce released its “The State of American Business 2012” plan this week, outlining their own vision of how to create jobs in America. There were…
Putting aside the impact of the proposed Enbridge pipeline on GHG emissions or spills on land and at sea, the case in favour of the pipeline rests on creating jobs.…
Last month, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) released a document entitled Public Education for the Public Good: A National Vision for Canada’s Post-Secondary Education System. I found the document…
Governments around the world are heading down a path to economic suicide. So said Nobel Prize-winning former chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, to hundreds of well-heeled financiers…
Newly-released data indicate that student debt is rising amongst new physicians in Canada. In 2010, 23 percent of medical residents surveyed estimated having more than $120,000 in education-related debt upon…
Pollsters tell us that Ontario’s New Democrats may double their seat total in next month’s provincial election. It’s also entirely conceivable that they could be part of a coalition government…
If you are interested in what BC’s new Premier Christy Clark is doing on the job creation front, check out a couple articles on the BC Policy Note blog (here…
Drill_Baby_Drill.jpg In the wake of President Obama’s speech on job creation last week, major players in the energy industry have banded together to put pressure on the president to speed…
A recent editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal looks at the use of “grade-boosting” stimulants (such as Ritalin) by Canadian post-secondary students. According to the editorial: “Universities and colleges…
regulations.jpg For years, the Republican Party in America has been on a crusade against what they call “job killing regulations.” A quick Google search for the phrase “job kil...
Arun Dubois’ blog post yesterday on Modern Monetary Theory has prompted me to write my own take on the subject. For those interested, an interesting thumbnail sketch of MMT, essentially…
Just over a year ago, I wrote an opinion piece about the federal government’s “innovation strategy” and its impact on the post-secondary education sector. In the piece, I argue that…
The University of Massachusetts has completed a new study that shows that bicycle lanes create jobs. As a cyclist, this seems obvious to me since whenever I see a store…
Manufacturing jobs have been declinining as a percentage of total jobs in most OECD countries for several decades, with Ontario being especially hard-hit as a jurisdiction. At the end of…
The following is the press release of a new initiative to examine the future of monetary policy, based on the core sentiment that growth is not enough. “Dynamic, stable and…
