MLI Newsletter
Vol. IV, No. 6
|
|
______________
EVENTS
MLI's next Great Canadian Debates
- Mark your calenders -
3rd Series begins:
October 24th,
2013
|
|
______________
VIDEO
WATCH:
Former Swedish Minister of Employment, Sven Otto Littorin on the "Swedish Model" for reform of the modern welfare state and what lessons Canada can learn about employment and healthcare
| |
|
______________
Stay in the know
JOIN OUR MAILING LIST
|
|
|
|
A New season of the Great Canadian Debates
is upon us...
|
The latest edition of the Great Canadian Debates is nearly here. The 2013-14 season once again features some of Canada's top minds debating the nation's most vital issues. Globe and Mail columnist Doug Saunders, National Post columnist Barbara Kay and Western University professor Salim Mansur are among our esteemed debaters.
The first debate will take place the evening of October 24th, 2013 at 7 p.m. at the Canadian War Museum and the topic is one of the most critical issues of our time. Former Alberta Energy Minister Ted Morton and Andrew Nikiforuk, author of The Energy of Slaves, debate the resolution "President Obama should welcome Canada's ethical oil."
|
|
MLI commentary exposes China's ambition
for the Arctic.
| |
Golf courses in Iceland; worker colonies in Greenland? What is China up to? In a ground-breaking commentary of vital national interest to Canadians released this month, Roger W. Robinson Jr., a specialist in global security risk, warns that China's true intention in the Arctic is to put on a friendly face in order to position itself to control or exploit energy, mineral and fishing resources, and the strategic waterways now gradually opening due to melting ice. Robinson, co-founder of the Prague Security Studies Institute, calls on Canada, the U.S. and their Arctic allies to take immediate steps to counter China's strategy in his paper titled China's 'Long Con' in the Arctic.
|
|
MLI paper debunks the myths of the
Canada Health Act.
|
Is it illegal under the Canada Health Act for provinces to allow private delivery of care, charge user fees or even allow private insurance? Not in the least, but Canadians could be forgiven for thinking so based on the rhetoric of politicians and vested interests.
In an important new paper, Michael Watts, a distinguished lawyer specializing in health care law, writes that provinces have much greater freedom to innovate in health care delivery than most people believe.
It's a matter of separating myth from reality surrounding the CHA.
|
|
July Leading Economic Indicator signals
accelerating growth.
|
The Macdonald-Laurier composite leading index increased by 0.4% in July after a 0.3% gain in June.The steady acceleration in the index, from a low increase of 0.1% early in the year, suggests that growth in the Canadian economy will strengthen in the second half of the year, said MLI senior fellow Philip Cross, former chief economic analyst at Statistics Canada. "Growth in June was temporarily dampened by flooding in Alberta and the construction strike in Quebec, but a pick-up in oil and gas output will offset some of these losses," Cross said.
He said the housing index drove much of the upturn in the composite index, rising 2.1% in July after declines as recently as in April. Both existing home sales and housing starts contributed to the gain. Still, the housing index remains about 10% below its peak in 2012.
|
|
The MLI leading Economic Indicator provides unique and valuable insights into the future course of the Canadian economy.
The next release date is September 30th, 2013.
|
'We see thee rise': MLI featured prominently in Forbes piece on Canadian think tanks
|
In an August 6 Forbes article , titled We See Thee Rise: Canada's Emerging Role In Policy Leadership, Alejandro Chafuen surveys Canada's think tank landscape and finds MLI standing tall. Chafuen writes that MLI "hit the ground running with great policy products," in 2010 and that "it also managed to rank ahead of other older think tanks."
|
|
New MLI team members
|
In July, MLI appointed a new managing editor and communications director. A career journalist, David Watson comes to the institute from the Ottawa Citizen where he had served as editorial pages editor since 2011. Watson joined the Citizen's editorial board in 2008 after leaving the Globe and Mail, where he worked as an editor on the Report on Business and then the Globe's comment pages. Watson will oversee the institute's commentaries and research publications, and MLI's public relations efforts.
In September, Andrea Grantham was appointed to the position of director of operations. Grantham is the former CEO of Physical and Health Education Canada (PHE Canada), an organization that focuses on supporting healthy lifestyles for Canadians by influencing the delivery of quality physical and health education programs in schools. Andrea also worked with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada overseeing the development of medical education standards. Passionate about issues relating to prevention as an investment in reducing Canada's rising health care costs, Andrea was twice recognized for her leadership by being named as one of Canada's Most Influential Women in Sport and Physical Activity (2010 and 2011) and a recipient of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.
As an integral part of MLI's management team, Grantham will be responsible for internal administration and event organizing, and playing a major role in the organization's fundraising efforts.
|
|
Other news from MLI:
|
Articles by Brian Lee Crowley:
In the Citizen and Postmedia, MLI managing director Brian Lee Crowley writes that there is a reasonable debate to be had about the limits of personal religious expression by public servants. But Quebec Premier Pauline Marois is not interested in a reasonable debate.Crowley tackles common assumptions about the value of a university degree in this Globe and Mail column. Universities benefit from claiming that graduates earn on average $1 million more over the course of a career, but this is an average Crowley notes, and "Far too many grads don't even come close." Not only that, but "The information that does exist often looks only at the performance of a school's graduates and does not count what happens to its dropouts. That's like trying to assess a doctor's competence while ignoring the patients who didn't survive his care." Crowley was also interviewed about the column on Charles Adler's radio show. To listen click here.In a column appearing in the Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald and other Postmedia papers, MLI managing director Brian Lee Crowley writes that "every serious federation in the world has an upper chamber, but I have not seen anyone in the current debate explain why that is and why it matters." Crowley says recent scandals are unacceptable and the Senate does its job of regional representation poorly, but this makes the case for reform, not abolishing the institution.Articles by MLI senior fellows:
MLI senior fellow Philip Cross writes in the Financial Post that to the surprise of many, the poverty rate barely budged in the recent recession. This is quite striking, since poverty rates have tracked Are you getting ahead? In the Globe and Mail MLI senior fellow Linda Nazareth takes a look at which professions are seeing real wage increases, and which aren't. She writes: "The biggest picture, to me, is that Canadians do continue to earn more, year after year, even after inflation," but she notes "In an ideal world, we would be seeing bigger gains for non-unionized workers, and across a wide swath of occupations."In the Financial Post, MLI senior fellow Philip Cross writes that GDP in a typical September is 10% above the seasonal low in January. "Since seasonal swings of 10% or more are routine, a small error in estimating seasonality can easily produce results in which residual seasonality swamps all other signals from the data," Cross writes.MLI senior fellow Philip Cross writes in the Financial Post about what the film The Great Gatsby does and does not tell us about income inequality in the United States. "The moral futility of trying to transcend one's history, not economic barriers to income mobility, is what the story is about," he writes.In the Globe and Mail MLI senior fellow Philip Cross and Sprott School of business professor Ian Lee take issue with arguments in favour of major Canada Pension Plan expansion that play to Canadians' fears about their retirement. Instead, they find a "chronic over-estimation of the income needed to retire ... and an under-estimation of the huge value of the assets Canadians hold."
|
|
|
|
|
