Governments are killing real jobs and conning us with claims of millions of good ‘green’ jobs. “Fool me once,” Stephen King wrote, “shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.” His adage certainly applies to the myth (and fake math) of green jobs. During the…
Crude oil markets continue to show signs of weakness – even without the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and the Suez Canal closure
Pressure is mounting on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies in the extended OPEC+ to roll over their crude oil output cuts when they meet on April 1. Markets continue to show signs of weakness – even without the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and the Suez Canal closure. But the Suez…
MMT leads to more government control over the economy and turns central banks into a political tool
Public debt is not a problem, suggests the big idea behind modern monetary theory (MMT). That’s a faulty and dangerous assumption. The current economic crisis has allowed MMT to gain influence among the political class. Among the people who developed United States President Joe Biden’s economic program is Stephanie Kelton, a former economic adviser to…
The general approach should be to have experts in each sport come together and decide on the specific rules for allowing fair competition
Most of the sports issues I write about are pretty straightforward – at least in my mind. The solutions seem pretty clear. Do big-time college athletes deserve a bigger slice of the billions being made from their efforts? Undoubtedly. In an era in which childhood obesity is at epidemic levels, and teenage anxiety, depression and…
Canada wasn’t targeted for international outrage because it was a threat to the global climate, but simply because it was an easy target
For several decades, Canada was the focus of a global attack on its natural resource economy, with its oil sands deposits (the world’s third-largest oil reserve) ranked as public enemy number one. Though only a tiny contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions (about 1.6 per cent of the total), the oil sands were seen as…
Canadian oil helps keep the United States economy humming and natural gas helps keep American homes warm
By Mark Milke and Lennie Kaplan Canadian Energy Centre In a world where Russian President Vladimir Putin is widely assumed to be behind the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, liberal democracies should stick together. This should be especially relevant on matters related to energy. Russia has been using energy exports as a weapon for…
The pandemic has plunged the West into a state of fear, with more people willing to accept greater government interference
In his first days in office, President Joe Biden rescinded a Donald Trump-era order that restricted the United States government’s use of diversity training to examine issues around race and gender bias, and systemic racism. In doing so, he will be advancing radical and divisive racial politics that have plagued his Democratic Party and popular…
Reducing our dependence on any one particular market or supplier makes us much less vulnerable to arbitrary and unfair treatment
“It’s not fair!” How often have parents heard this loud, angry declaration from young children at any real or perceived injustice? Children have an innate sense of fairness that demands to be respected. Hence the practice of asking one child to divide a piece of cake and the other to choose first. Fairness has become…
An expected new nuclear deal, a pipeline project and an easing of sanctions all contribute to increased production and exports
Crude oil markets are focused on the Iran nuclear deal. A new United States administration under President Joe Biden has pledged to revert to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal. The world awaits the next moves, which will set the contours of future Iranian oil output. With…
If Trump was isolationist, Biden will be more open to diplomacy and exchange with America’s allies
With the return of the Democrats to the White House, there will be changes in United States foreign policy. Canada, as the third largest U.S. trade partner, will be impacted. The presidency of Republican Donald Trump was characterized by strong protectionism. It featured a renegotiation of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), which led to…