Tag: Transfer Payments

Zombie federalism on the prowl again: Part One

Zombie federalism on the prowl again: Part One

Posted by | May 9, 2021 | |

John Quiggins’ 2010 book, Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us describes how neoliberal economic ideas that should died with the Great Recession of 2007-8 continue to live on. Readers of the Chronicle-Herald and the National Post have recently been exposed to something similar: zombie fiscal federalism, an ungenerous view of the country from the distant past that should have stayed buried. The outbreak of zombie fiscal federalism made the opinion section of the Herald on April 24. A full-page article by David MacKinnon, with the headline, “Economic Reality Will Wreck our East Coast sand castle” reported...

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Donald Savoie ducks crucial issue for Maritimes

Donald Savoie ducks crucial issue for Maritimes

Posted by | Jul 26, 2017 | |

Donald Savoie has mounted the barricades again. Called by some the Sage of Bouctouche for his long career of writing, teaching and advising governments, the septuagenarian University of Moncton political scientist has a new book out on Maritime economic development and its complaints. The 400-page tome Looking for Bootstraps: Economic Development in the Maritimes comes along a decade after Savoie swore off the topic following publication of “Visiting Grandchildren: Economic Development in the Maritimes,” also weighing in at around 400 pages. Grandchildren was a scholarly work published by the University of Toronto Press. A cover blurb called it Savoie’s...

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Canada 150 bittersweet celebration for many

Canada 150 bittersweet celebration for many

Posted by | Jul 2, 2017 | , |

A lot of folks who have been badly treated by the entity named “Canada” have come forward over the last few days to cast a pall over the country’s 150th anniversary celebrations. Many indigenous Canadians have been speaking out for months in an effort to shift the focus from celebration to contemplation of the treatment of indigenous people since Europeans set up shop on the northern half of North America over 400 years ago. They carried their message to Parliament Hill over the weekend. In Halifax, some Chinese Canadians were on the news last week drawing attention to the...

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Feds will roll out cash… if you re-elect the Liberals!

Feds will roll out cash… if you re-elect the Liberals!

Posted by | Apr 24, 2017 | , |

The recent federal budget doesn’t appear to be getting rave reviews from Canadians. This past week the Globe and Mail published results of a poll asking 1,000 people whether they had a positive or negative view of the March 22 federal budget. According to the Globe, 52% had negative or somewhat negative opinions. Only five per cent said they had a positive view, 33 % said their opinion was somewhat positive. With only one out of twenty firmly positive, participants were clearly unimpressed with the budget, and its lack of a plan for eliminating the deficit seems to be...

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Book lays out hard truths about region’s plight

Book lays out hard truths about region’s plight

Posted by | Jan 30, 2017 | , , |

The book has been around for a while but Richard Saillant’s A Tale of Two Countries takes on fresh relevance in the wake of those unfortunate health side deals signed last month by three of the four Atlantic provinces. Saillant, director of the Donald J. Savoie Institute at the University of Moncton, exposes what he calls The Great Demographic Imbalance looming over the country. His book, which came out from Nimbus Publishing about six months ago, details the dire effect this region’s aging baby boom generation will have both on our costs of social services and our economy’s capacity to pay...

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Richard Starr, The man behind the Point

About Richard

RICHARD STARR has had careers as a journalist, public servant, broadcaster, political staffer and freelance policy adviser. He is author of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, a former radio and TV producer and weekly newspaper editor, and the author of three non-fiction books. Starr has lived in Dartmouth for more than 30 years.

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