Who was Barbara Mitchell?
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Immigration form

Immigration and the Welfare State Revisited finds that despite recent policy initiatives to improve the economic prospects of immigrants, Canadian taxpayers still bear a heavy fiscal burden to support newcomers. Specifically, the study calculates that the difference between the tax payments of new immigrants and the value of government services they consume was about $5,329 per immigrant in 2014.

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Report Card on Quebec's Secondary Schools 2015

The Report Card on Quebec’s Secondary Schools 2015 ranks 454 public, private, Francophone and Anglophone schools based largely on the results from provincewide tests in French, English, science, mathematics and history.

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ranching realities

Ranching Realities in the 21st Century highlights land ownership structures in the province of Alberta where over nine million acres of land is owned by the government and leased to farmers and ranchers. Through a collection of essays, the book looks to other jurisdictions to identify alternative structures that could facilitate higher earnings per acre of land, more livestock, or better protection of ecologically sensitive lands.  It finds that land policies in Alberta, and elsewhere, can be enhanced if policies ensure that property rights are well-defined and transferable.

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Managing the Risks of Hydraulic Fracturing

Managing the Risks of Hydraulic Fracturing: An Update examines the environmental risks related to hydraulic fracturing (or ‘fracking’), the practice of injecting sand, water, and a relatively small quantity of chemicals  deep underground at high pressures to extract fossil fuels.  The study looks beyond the often-cited claims of anti-fracking activists and spotlights the latest government and academic research about the actual effects of fracking.

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scale of taxes and increases

Alberta’s Personal Income Tax Increases Likely to Yield Less Revenue than Expected, forecasts how much revenue the Alberta government will likely generate from its personal tax rate increases announced earlier this year. It finds that tax rate increases encourage people to change their behaviour to avoid paying additional taxes, yielding less revenue than expected by governments. In Alberta’s case, the study calculates that the government will likely receive $1.7 billion less than expected from 2016 to 2020.

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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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