Who was Barbara Mitchell?
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Residential Land-Use Regulation in Ontario’s Greater Golden Horseshoe

Amid increasing concerns about housing affordability in Southern Ontario, New Homes and Red Tape: Residential Land-Use Regulation in Ontario’s Greater Golden Horseshoe is the Fraser Institute’s first ever survey of Ontario homebuilders. It compares and ranks jurisdictions across the Greater Golden Horseshoe on several categories of red tape (construction approval times, timeline uncertainty, regulatory costs and fees, rezoning prevalence and the effect council and community groups have on development) based on the experiences and opinions of industry professionals. The survey — which is part of a broader effort to understand the effects of land-use regulation on Canadian housing supply — finds that Oakville, Oshawa and Toronto are among the most regulated municipalities in the Greater Golden Horseshoe and consequently among the most difficult in which to build new housing.

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Alberta's Budget Deficit: Why Spending Is to Blame

Alberta’s Budget Deficit: Why Spending Is To Blame concludes that, had the Alberta government limited program spending increases since 2004/05 to keep pace with inflation and a growing population, the province would have a budget surplus of $4.4 billion instead of the projected $5.9 billion deficit—a difference of $10.3 billion.

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Where Our Students are Educated: Measuring Student Enrolment in Canada

Where Our Students are Educated: Measuring student enrolment in Canada, compares and contrasts the changes in public and private school enrolment, by province, between 2000/01 to 2012/13.  It finds that, against the backdrop of declining student populations, private school enrolment across Canada is up by almost 17 per cent while public school enrolment  has decreased eight per cent.

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Ontario—No Longer a Place to Prosper spotlights Ontario’s decline from economic powerhouse to economic laggard. It chronicles successive Ontario government policies that have led to the province’s poor economic performance. It finds that Ontario’s economic growth, employment and per-capita income has lagged behind national averages making Canada’s most populous province less competitive, less prosperous and less attractive for both workers and business investment.

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Mining and Aboriginal Rights in Yukon

Mining and Aboriginal Rights in Yukon: How Certainty Affects Investor Confidence finds that the legal certainty established by modern land claim agreements in Yukon — once seen as an advantage in attracting new investment — is now being undermined by Canadian courts. Specifically, the courts have forced unforeseen obligations upon governments and third-parties, beyond the requirements already spelled out in modern treaties, thus leading to a decline in investor confidence. The study warns that Yukon’s experience could be a harbinger of uncertainty right across the country and particularly British Columbia.

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LNG Exports from British Columbia: The Cost of Regulatory Delay

LNG Exports from British Columbia: The Cost of Regulatory Delay finds that unless BC’s regulatory process for liquefied natural gas industry is streamlined, the province risks losing out on over $20 billion a year on export revenues.

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The Economic Freedom of the World 2015 report uses data from 2013 (the most recent year available) to rank jurisdictions based on their levels of economic freedom (measured in size of government, taxation, regulation, rule of law, etc.).

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