Who was Barbara Mitchell?

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For defenders of government-run health care, the existence of provincial drug benefit plans is actually a blot on Canadian health care, in that they are not part of single-payer, first-dollar coverage, medicare (National Forum on Health, 1997:22). When the state took over health care, it left prescription drugs out of its grasp. As of 2001, governments in Canada paid for an estimated 49 percent of prescription costs, private insurers 30 percent, and individuals 21 percent.

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Report Card on Quebec's Secondary Schools: 2002 Edition. Comparison of results among schools provides a better understanding of the effectiveness of each school. By comparing a school's latest results with those of earlier years, we can see if the school is improving or not.

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The physical phenomena in climate change and weather are among the most complex in nature, and science can say very little about what they will do in the future. Yet a large international policy framework has been built precisely on the assumption that we know what is happening and how to control it. In Taken By Storm , Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick prove this assumption false, carefully explaining the science of climate change and deconstructing the widespread myth of global warming.

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This study examines and evaluates the commitments made by the BC government to welfare reform. It draws comparisons with recent welfare reforms in the United States because the US reforms have proven overwhelmingly successful at reducing welfare caseloads, increasing the employment and earnings of previous welfare recipients, and reducing poverty rates. The eight evaluation areas were selected based on research assessing successful US welfare reform. The reforms encompass two broad areas: policy and program provision. The eight evaluation areas are: Ending the entitlement to welfare, Diversion, Immediate work requirements and sanctions, Employment-focused back-to-work programs, Making Work Pay, Administrative privatization, Program delivery privatization, and Non-profit sector reform.

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This is a series of articles on Democratic Reform. These articles were originally published in previous issues of Fraser Forum from October 2001 - October 2002:

Democratic Reform: Part I - VIII

- October 2001 - Part I - This article explains the three levels of democratic reform that Canadians should consider.

- November 2001 - Part II - This article discusses why, in many areas, the real need is not for more democratic government, but much less.

- December 2001 - Part III - Subsidiarity - When power is divided, the control of government is simplified, which minimizes the size of mistake any single power centre can make.

- January 2002 - Part IV - The best way to control governments is to keep them small.

- February 2002 - Part V - Our Canadian system of governance is well suited for a primitive society that needs a strong man. We no longer fit that profile.

- May 2002 - Part VI - Internal Party Governance

- September 2002 - Part VII - Representation, Oversight, & Adversarial Governance

- October 2002 - Part VIII - Constitutional Constraints

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The federal government justifies large-scale immigration on the basis that it is essential to economic growth as well as to offset the aging of the population and the increasing proportion of retired persons to workers. These rationales, however, are not based on facts. The government's own research indicates that immigration and population increases play a role at best in economic growth.

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This Critical Issues Bulletin is the Institute's twelfth attempt to document the extent to which queues for visits to specialists and for diagnostic and surgical procedures are being used to control health care expenses. When we began producing waiting-list measures in 1988, there was anecdotal evidence that hospital waiting times were becoming significant. However, there were no systematic measurements of the extent of waiting.

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