The Macdonald-Laurier Institute is pleased to host the launch of F.H. Buckley's newest book "The Once and Future King", featuring a reading and discussion by the author of his groundbreaking work. By attending this event, not only will the first 100 people receive a free copy of "The Once and Future King" (a $31 value), but all of you will be donating to the Macdonald-Laurier Institute to support its mission in celebrating this nation's greatest achievements, and helping make Canada the best governed country in the world.

Peace, Order and Good Government can often seem a bit pallid and, well, self-deprecatingly Canadian beside America's stirring call for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, but according to Buckley, Canadians have no reason to feel "constitution envy" compared to the U.S. On the contrary, measured on the things that really matter, like protecting liberty and controlling the power of the executive, his latest book argues that Canada has it largely right and America is increasingly failing to live up to the ideals of its founders.

 

Only a week after weighing in on the federal government's conditional approval of the Northern Gateway pipeline, MLI authors jumped back into the fray with commentary on the Supreme Court's decision to expand land title rights for Aboriginals. MLI author Dwight Newman, writing in the National Post, said the Tsilhqot'in decision will force natural resource development companies to develop stronger relationships with First Nations. This, he says, will require those hoping to develop natural resources to build more public support when they are proposing projects such as pipelines. MLI Senior Fellow Ken Coates, writing for Beacon News, argued the Supreme Court ruling assures Aboriginals "a proper and substantial place" in Canadian resource development. Instead of treating Aboriginal groups' participation as a minor irritant to planned developments, Coates said, business and governments will now need to establish viable partnerships and collaborations. Coates and Newman spoke to the Globe and Mail, the Financial Post, the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, the CBC, BNN, the Hill Times and CFAX 1070 about the Tsilhqot'in decision.

The hundreds of millions of public dollars poured into biofuels have cost Canadians several times more than they returned in social and environmental benefits, even using the most optimistic assumptions about the resulting greenhouse gas reductions, a new study from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute finds.

The new report, by University of Guelph economics professors Douglas Auld and Ross McKitrick, finds that the cost to Canadians of biofuels support programs has been between $3.00 and $3.50 for every dollar these programs return in benefits.

"Canada's biofuel support programs have been a dismal failure", Auld and McKitrick write in the report, titled "Money to Burn: Assessing the costs and benefits of Canada's strategy for vehicle biofuels".

Governments across the country have plunged hundreds of millions of dollars into biofuels subsidies in recent years, a trend which rapidly accelerated under the governing federal Conservatives starting in 2006. They hoped that, by forcing cars to use less gasoline, the program would create environmental benefits.

However the authors show these programs have yet to yield a useful return.

Auld and McKitrick authored an op-ed on the subject in the National Post, while Canadian Business magazine and the Regina Leader-Post covered the major findings in news stories. Auld also spoke to John Gormley Live about the report.

 

 

MLI Commentary: New victims' rights bill needs teeth

Legal expert Benjamin Perrin, in a new commentary for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, warned the federal government to adjust its proposed victims' rights bill or risk producing a piece of legislation that is ineffective at protecting those harmed by crime.

Perrin, a Senior Fellow with MLI and law professor at the University of British Columbia, applauds the government for introducing the Victims Bill of Rights Act (Bill C-32) but cautions that without giving victims the ability to enforce these new rights, the bill's goals will be neutralized and it will replicate the failure of previous ill-fated attempts at protecting victims.

"Denying victims any ability to actually rely on these rights in a courtroom risks the creation of 'rights' without remedies - something that has undermined previous victims' rights legislation in our country already", writes Perrin in the commentary, titled "More Than Words: Enhancing the Proposed Canadian Victims Bill of Rights (C-32)".

Perrin also authored an op-ed on the subject for the National Post.

Crowley says government's internal trade strategy an important first step 

MLI expands its reach on social media 

Coates named to New Brunswick's First Nations advisory team

The Macdonald-Laurier Institute mourns the loss of Purdy Crawford

All of us associated with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute

were devastated to learn of the death at age 82 of Canadian businessman and lawyer Purdy Crawford on Aug. 12.

Crawford, an inductee of the Canadian Business Hall of Fame, was an early supporter of MLI when it was founded in 2010 and served on the Institute's advisory board.

"Purdy was one of a kind, but that will not prevent all of us who benefited from his leadership from doing all we can to continue to act on the values he helped to instill in us", wrote Brian Lee Crowley, Managing Director of MLI, in a blog post.

"Knowing him was an unforgettable privilege - I stood on the broad shoulders of a giant who never let me down".

 

Cameras in the Senate won't bring honour to national debate: Crowley in Postmedia papers

 

Writing in Postmedia papers, MLI Managing Director Brian Lee Crowley dampened any expectations that the addition of cameras in the Senate will raise the quality of debate in the upper chamber.

Look no further than the House of Commons, he says, where the introduction of cameras close to 40 years ago has made the institution no more thoughtful, honourable or judicious than before.

 

Statistics Canada error shows human element in data collection: Cross in the Post

 

Writing in the Financial Post, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow Philip Cross says that the Statistics Canada error in its job numbers is a reminder of how the human element plays a role in the collection and processing of data.

Despite the mistake, which had the agency scrambling to produce a corrected Labour Force Survey, Cross stresses that data collection and processing is for the most part improving.

Cross also spoke on the Statistics Canada error to the Toronto Star, CBC News, the Ottawa Citizen and the CBC Radio One show Ottawa Morning, as well as the National Post, the Toronto Star, the Canadian Press and CBC TV.

He also authored an op-ed for the Globe and Mail and spoke to the Ottawa Citizen for a feature on recent cutbacks at Stats Can.

 

Balanced budget should be Ottawa's priority: Crowley in the Globe

 

Writing in the Globe and Mail, MLI Managing Director Brian Lee Crowley urges the federal government to resist calls for plunging Canada back into a deficit and instead prioritize a balanced budget.

He says Ottawa should return to the mid-1990s, when running surpluses helped attract economic growth, job creation and investment.

MLI has published extensively on the need for a balanced budget. This includes a Canadian Century video, the book "Northern Light: Lessons for America from Canada's fiscal fix" and a commentary on what the United States can learn from Canada's history with a balanced budget.

 

Janet Ajzenstat releases new book, Discovering Confederation

 

Macdonald-Laurier Institute research advisory board member and author Janet Ajzenstat has written a new book, titled Discovering Confederation: A Canadian's Story.

The book tells the story of Ajzenstat's academic career and the viewpoints she's formed along the way. Ajzenstat takes the reader through her life as a student and her time learning from prominent thinkers Allan Bloom and George Grant to her current teaching career. Throughout, Discovering Confederation shows why individual rights are protected under parliamentary democracy.

Click here to learn more about the book from its publisher, McGill-Queen's University Press. In addition to serving on the research advisory board, Ajzenstat is also the author of the 2010 MLI paper "Confederation and Individual Liberty".

Discovering Confederation is the latest in a slew of books written by MLI authors.

 

Civil service sick leave report misses the point: Crowley in Postmedia papers

 

Writing in Postmedia papers, MLI Managing Director Brian Lee Crowley says Parliament's budget watchdog is asking the wrong questions on high rates of sick leave in the federal civil service.

Crowley says that, by not considering why sick leave is higher for bureaucrats than in the private sector, the Parliamentary Budget Officer's recent report fails to determine how to get better value for taxpayers.

As it stands now, he says, the PBO is overlooking the possibility that Canadians aren't getting good enough value from workers who are off sick.

The Ottawa Citizen, the Vancouver Sun, the Montreal Gazette, the Leader Post, the Province, the Star Phoenix and the Edmonton Journal ran an edited version of the column.

The National Post's Chris Selley also picked it up in his Full Pundit feature on July 21.

 

MLI partners with U.K. think tank for Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty

 

The Macdonald-Laurier Institute partnered with the U.K.-based Centre for Policy Studies to provide in-depth coverage of the Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty, which took place in London, England on Wednesday, June 18. For a complete schedule, click here.

The event featured an impressive lineup of speakers, including Canadian cabinet minister Jason Kenney. Also speaking were U.S. General David Petraeus, Professor Niall Ferguson and John Micklethwait, the editor-in-chief of the Economist.

MLI contributed columns, blog posts from Institute for Liberal Studies executive director Matt Bufton, and livestreamed the event's speakers.

MLI also published a series of videos from the event.

 

Right to be forgotten diminishes public sector accountability: Singleton in the Citizen

 

Writing in the Ottawa Citizen, MLI author Solveig Singleton argued that the "Right to be Forgotten" is a misguided ruling that empowers the public sector to restrain information created in the private sector.

The Right to be Forgotten refers to a decision the European Court of Justice released earlier this year. The court ruled that Google had to eliminate certain links in searches - such as those that corresponded to the complainant's debt - if they no longer applied to someone's present-day situation.

Singleton, the author of the recently-released MLI paper "Finding the Balance on Digital Privacy", says that this is a misguided interpretation of the role human rights should perform.

"The Right to be Forgotten seems designed not to add to accountability, but to reduce it", she argues.

MLI Managing Director Brian Lee Crowley also authored an op-ed for the National Post about how the Right to be Forgotten is masking our duty to remember.

 

Other MLI columns and op-eds

 

MLI authors were busy throughout the summer writing about current affairs in newspapers: Senior Fellow Benjamin Perrin authored an op-ed for the National Post about religious persecution in China; Philip Cross wrote in the National Post about why we need to cut down our desire for data and in the Ottawa Citizen about why Prime Minister Stephen Harper was right to cut the GST; Senior Fellow Ken Coates authored an op-ed for MLI about why violence against Aboriginal women requires a creative solution and also joined up with Bill Morrison for a piece in the National Post on the Ontario government expanding the reach of university satellite campuses; author Christian Leuprecht wrote a piece for the Public Sector Digest on why money for community safety will help cut down on police costs; Senior Fellow Alex Wilner wrote about the West's counterterrorism efforts for Vanguard Magazine; and Brian Lee Crowley authored columns on why we risk drowning in a sea of advice from experts and why it's time for the federal government to create an "annual regulatory budget".

 

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