Canada’s first new oil refinery in 34 years has already been criticized for its soaring project costs and now the North West Redwater [NWR] Sturgeon Refinery north of Edmonton is being criticized in a damning report out of the University of Calgary. “The NWR Sturgeon Refinery seemed like a good idea on paper,” said a […]

Trevor Tombe is an associate professor of economics at the University of Calgary, and aa research fellow at the School of Public Policy. These days, news flows through a firehose. Take a moment to reflect on the past month alone. U.S. President Donald Trump levied new tariffs on steel and aluminum, and Canada, Mexico, Japan, the […]

Andrei Sulzenko is a former Canadian trade negotiator and is currently an executive fellow at the School of Public Policy, University of Calgary. With last Thursday’s announcement by the Trump administration that it was following through with clearly illegitimate steel and aluminum tariffs, the gloves are off on trade, and the world is venturing into […]

CALGARY—A 2015 property crime spike in Alberta’s largest city was likely linked to the start of the opioid crisis and recession in the oilpatch, a new study found. The average number of property crimes — robberies, break-and-enters and vehicle thefts — has increased by 50 per cent since 2015, found the study, released by the […]

  On the weekend, the United Conservative Party in Alberta voted to include a return to the so-called flat tax in its policy platform. Taxes, of course, garner a lot of interest in Alberta, and there has been much discussion about this proposal. The Alberta “flat tax” dates back to the 2001 tax year when […]

Alberta’s recession is now long over. The latest data from Statistics Canada, released Wednesday, shows 2017 was a year of strong economic growth. Gains in the province’s oil and gas sector were particularly high, driving half the gains for the year. But, after 18 months of economic recovery, the province remains divided between those who […]

Long before Doug Ford gets a chance as premier to wage his scrap-the-tax war against Ontario’s cap-and-trade system, and Justin Trudeau’s carbon price program; before Alberta’s Jason Kenney can win the right to combat evil Ottawa’s “tax on everything” diktat, a bespectacled, low-talking man in Regina by the name of Scott Moe will have his […]