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In recent years, a growing body of academic studies have attempted to empirically assess the efficiency and usefulness of public sector activities in industrial countries. That is, these studies analyze the impact of government spending on the welfare of citizens by examining a host of economic and social indicators.

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This report analyzes the total time patients must wait in Canada to gain access to newly invented pharmaceutical and biological medicines, also known as patented drugs.

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This Alert examines the effectiveness of marked increases in federal cash transfers to the provinces in promoting a better and improved Canadian health care system. The first section outlines federal transfers to the provinces for health; the second examines a series of health care performance indicators in 1997 and compares current performance to determine if any changes have occurred.

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The Report Card on Alberta's Elementary Schools: 2007 Edition reports a variety of relevant, objective indicators of school performance. These indicators are used to calculate an overall rating for each school. On the basis of this rating, the schools are ranked. The Report Card brings all of this information together in one easily accessible public document so that anyone can analyze and compare the performance of individual schools. By doing so, the Report Card assists parents when they choose a school for their children and encourages and assists all those seeking to improve their schools.

This annual Report Card uses relevant, publicly-available data to rate and rank 705 of Alberta's public, separate, private, charter, and francophone elementary schools. This is the only comprehensive and widely-distributed Report Card on elementary schools available in Canada.

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Capital gains taxes, like all forms of taxation, raise revenues for the government but also impose economic costs. Unfortunately, the cost of capital gains taxes is no limited to the amount of tax collected. Capital gains taxes impose additional costs on the economy because they reduce returns on investment and, thereby, cause individuals and businesses to alter their behavior. As a result, capital gains taxes have a substantial impact on the reallocation of capital, the stock of capital, and the level of entrepreneurship in Canada.

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Since 1997, The Fraser Institute has conducted an annual survey of metal mining and exploration companies to assess how mineral endowments and public policy factors such as taxation and regulation affect exploration investment. Survey results represent the opinions of executives and exploration managers in mining and mining consulting companies operating around the world. The survey now covers 65 jurisdictions around the world, on every continent except Antartica, including sub-national jurisdictions in Canada, Australia, and the United States. This year, Colombia was added to the survey.

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Under most scenarios of the future world, including those developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Special Report on Emission Scenarios(SRES), the world should be getting more populated.