Who was Barbara Mitchell?
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Comparing the Costs of the CPP with Public Pension Plans in Ontario

Proponents of expanding the Canada Pension Plan and those in support of launching the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan often trumpet claims of economies of scale, implying the relative costs of these plans decline as they grow and accumulate more assets. Comparing the Costs of the Canada Pension Plan with Public Pension Plans in Ontario, compares the total costs (investment and administrative) of five large public-sector pension plans in Ontario with the CPP and finds that those claims aren’t necessarily true.

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2015 Global Go To Think Tank Index

The Fraser Institute is ranked Number One among Canadian think tanks and 17th among all think tanks worldwide, according to the 2015 Global Go To Think Tank Index published by the University of Pennsylvania and released at The World Bank in Washington, D.C.

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An Economic Analysis of Rural Land Use Policies in Ontario

An Economic Analysis of Rural Land Use Policies in Ontario dispels the wide-spread belief that Ontario is rapidly losing agricultural land to urbanization. Building upon analysis by two Western University professors in the 1980s, the study finds that the area of cropland in Ontario – land that’s used to plant crops – has been essentially constant since 1951.

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ladder of upward mobility

An Introduction to the State of Poverty in Canada examines the changing levels of poverty in Canada since 1996 distinguishing between those Canadians trapped in low-income versus those that are experiencing low-income for a short-term transitory period.  It finds that the average time a person spends living in low income is 2.4 years while only 1.5 per cent of low-income Canadians experienced persistent low incomes year after year.

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Select Cost Sharing in Universal Health Care Countries

Select Cost Sharing in Universal Health Care Countries examines the utilization of health-care user fees — for access to hospitals, general practitioners or specialists — in other countries which, like Canada, have accessible and high-performing universal health care. It finds that Canada remains one of the few universal access countries that doesn’t require patients to participate in paying for care through some form of cost sharing.

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Effect of Corporate Income and Payroll Taxes on the Wages

While some advocate for increases in corporate taxes as a means to deal with current fiscal challenges, The Effect of Corporate Income and Payroll Taxes on the Wages of Canadian Workers, calculates the monetary impact of such a policy on the average worker. It finds that, after controlling for other factors (such as a worker’s age, education, occupation, and industry), a one per cent increase in the corporate income tax rate reduces the average hourly wage rate of Canadian workers by between 0.15 and 0.24 per cent in the following year.

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pipelines or policies

Pipelines or Policies: What’s Behind the Fall in Investor Confidence in Alberta, spotlights recent oil industry tribulations — such as the Keystone XL pipeline announcement and the Alberta government’s decision to move forward with an energy royalty review — to determine what events have had a greater effect on investor perceptions.

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