|
|
|
"Should we end prohibition?" by Scott Reid Many currently banned substances have physical and psychological effects that are no more harmful than those associated with legal recreational drugs such as caffeine and alcohol. Like the prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920s, their prohibition skews the allocation of law enforcement resources, artificially raises prices to extremely high levels, encourages crime by addicts, and prevents the emergence of privately institutions and products to deal with the very real social problems posed by addiction. In the first half of the 20th century, decisions about whether or not to prohibit alcohol consumption in Canada were made at the local level, often by means of direct consultation with voters in plebiscites. We should consider returning to this system of decision-making. "Liberal morality and the myths of drug criminalization" by Christopher P. Manfredi Current Canadian drug laws may need minor amendment but they should not be abandoned. The rate of incarceration for drug offences is not high; the costs of the “war on drugs” are minimal; and many of the shortcomings of prohibition would not be greatly reduced in a successor regime of regulation. Drug use is an activity that should invite government intervention through legal sanctions. Law has normative, and not merely utilitarian, ends. It serves a moral education function that contributes to character formation, and this is an essential task of governing. Principle and prudence limit what governments can do to accomplish this task, but they do not eliminate it altogether. "Canada as a one-party state" by Richard Gwyn For several decades now, Canadian politics has been dominated by the Liberal Party. But for most of that time there was at least an opposition that could credibly claim to be an alternative government. That is no longer the case. One-party government may not be as bad as it sounds. There are many centres of dissent within our society; moreover, our democracy is currently diminished for reasons that have little to do with the number of potential governing parties. But it is not healthy. Even if we cannot return to effective electoral competition, we should try to encourage independence among MPs, both government and opposition alike. "What kind of federalism do Canadians (outside Quebec) want?" by Fred Cutler and Matthew Mendelsohn Detailed polling in Alberta and British Columbia suggests Canadians outside Quebec have no deep commitment to the principle of federalism. They have little knowledge of or support for the existing division of powers, care little about which order of government exercises which power and have little interest in strengthening the powers of either order of government. In important policy areas, what they care about are results, and they see the cooperation between both orders of government as better able to achieve this end than having each government remain sovereign in its own sphere. But only to a limited extent do they realize that cooperation inevitably brings conflict and that even good-natured collaboration makes responsibility harder to pin on any one government. "Give mom and dad a break: Family-friendly tax options for Canada" by Ken Boessenkool The federal income tax system currently treats dual-earner families better than single-earner families, and families without children better than families with. The federal government could employ several strategies for eliminating these anomalies. The general themes would be to provide per-child deductions, not credits, to all families with children, to move to a single rate of tax—that is, a schedule without brackets—and to raise personal exemptions and make them equal for earners and non-earners alike. A more radical suggestion is to devolve refundable child tax credits to the provinces, with the federal government significantly increasing deductions for individuals and children. "Make school boards pay when kids don't learn" by Rodney A. Clifton Full-blown voucher systems for primary and secondary education are usually bitterly opposed by teachers and principals in the public school system. They also don’t work in rural areas, where lack of population density makes effective competition among private schools unlikely. A modified voucher system would have the public school boards pick up the tab for privately-provided remedial work whenever parent-funded independent tests showed that a student was more than two grades behind in public school. Having to pay for the public schools’ failings would give taxpayers a strong incentive to make sure the schools perform well. "Lament for a nation-all over again?" by Irving Brecher Successive Canadian policy innovations over the last 50 years have given rise to repeated warnings that whatever reform was being considered—from free trade to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms would lead to the end of Canadian independence. In fact, Canada has and holds fast to a set of values and institutions that are quite different from those of our southern neighbour. No policy change currently in the air—be it monetary union, sales of water or harmonization of border measures—threatens that. "Access to foreign R&D should not undermine domestic R&D efforts" by Walid Hejazi Because industrial research and development (R&D) produce well-known spillover benefits, some commentators have argued that Canada should not subsidize its own R&D but should instead rely on technology transfer. Analysis shows that R&D that comes here either through foreign investment or embedded in imports has a bigger effect in boosting Canadian productivity than our own R&D does. But that doesn’t mean we should give up on encouraging domestic R&D. When R&D is conducted by our direct competitors we can’t depend on ready access to it, while if foreign multinationals give us most of our skills and knowledge, we can’t be sure we get the full benefit from them. "The PR path to decentralization" by Brian Fitzgerald Proportional representation (PR) is currently proposed as a solution to a large number of the country’s political ills. Most of PR’s supporters point to the encouraging experience of stable northern European democracies. But none of the countries usually mentioned suffers from Canadian-style regional or ethnic divisions. Three countries that do—Belgium, Italy and Spain—have had much less happy experiences. In the bargaining over who will form a government, regional parties have sold their support in exchange for devolution. The same could happen here. "Good tax policy requires good tax statistics. Why can't we do better?" by Alan Macnaughton and Thomas Matthews Good policy analysis requires good data. One reason US tax policy analysis often seems better than Canadian is that American researchers have better data to work with. The US makes tax data on individuals publicly available, though stripped of all identifiers. Having this data means analysts can estimate individual behavioural responses to tax policy. In Canada, similar data is available only at the discretion of the Department of Finance and through personal visits to Statistics Canada. Moreover, the Green Book, an annual summary of tax statistics published by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, no longer appears in a print version and has been delayed in the past few years. A more forthcoming approach to providing data would likely result in better research on Canadian tax policies. "Joe Clark: Last man standing" by Richard Nielsen Our politics is sodden with pragmatists. Our parties fall over themselves to ape the unprincipled but stunningly successful expediency of the federal Liberals. Is there no one who will found his politics on our traditional Tory vision of seeking after justice and freedom? Actually, there is such a man, the man from High River, via Calgary Centre. |
