Alberta’s fiscal performance in the second half of the 1990s made possible two significant achievements: lower debt and tax reform. But more recently, Alberta has allowed its underlying spending path to grow much faster than a reasonable estimate of future…

When it comes to taxes, most of the pressure put on Ottawa takes the form of calls for “lower” taxes. Left in the shadows are the more tricky questions of “better” taxes, or even “fairer” taxes. That is unfortunate because…

Albertans are currently witnessing the spectacle of federal cabinet ministers liberally sprinkling dollars across our province. And while the attention may be welcome, the unfortunate reality is that each new dollar Ottawa doles out costs Albertans at least 35 cents. …

The current debate on Ottawa’s equalization payments to economically disadvantaged provinces is not primarily, as Stephane Dion asserted in these pages last week, about special treatment or about disincentives that the program creates for recipient provinces – as worthy as…

Equalization was designed to give cash to economically weaker provinces so that they would have total revenues that are comparable to a representative Canadian average. And at that task, the program works remarkably well. In doing so, however, the program…