Category Frances Woolley
How to make mine operators pay for the mess they make
When an Ontario cemetery operator sells a burial plot, they must side aside 40 percent of the money they receive into a "care and maintenance account". This is a way of solving a grave moral hazard problem: operators might sell plots, and then walk away from their maintenance obligations. The same kind of moral hazard […]
Will legalization reduce youth marijuana use?
Rates of teen marijuana use in Canada are among the highest in the world. Legalization advocates blame high use on criminalization: "the ready availability from dealers with no scruples about targeting youth, and the cachet of forbidden fruit—or rather, buds." Indeed, the first objective of the Canadian federal government's marijuana legalization agenda is to "Protect young Canadians by […]
Help! The senior guy in my field acts like a total jerk sometimes. What should I do?
I wrote myself a letter, and answered it: Dear WCI, The senior guy in my field acts like a total jerk sometimes. He's working in an area I care deeply about – gender and taxation. But he trivializes and sensationalizes critically important issues. For example, I just heard him give a talk about the optimal tax treatment of […]
A Grave Problem
Ontario has no eerie, overgrown church graveyards. There are no dangerously angled tombstones, no grave markers obscured by rambling vines, nor ancient trees with branches sweeping the ground. In Ontario, cemetery operators are required to maintain graveyards properly. There must be an accessible entrance. Grave markers must be stabilized. Section 29 of the Funeral, Burial and Cremation […]
Why is it so hard to know the relationship between immigration and economic performance?
Here is the number of new permanent residents to Canada, as a percentage of the existing population, over time: "New permanent residents" is not a perfect measure of immigration – it excludes temporary foreign workers, who have become much more important in recent years, and also ignores emigration, that is, the non-trivial number of newcomers […]
The carbon costs of immigration
Canada is, as far as countries go, relatively cold and sparsely populated. Our houses are large by global standards, and we drive a fair amount. We are rich enough to consume a lot of stuff. These factors, together with the oil sands, mean that we have one of the world's highest levels of CO2 emissions on […]
A Supreme Folly
Last August, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that, in future, only candidates who are "functionally bilingual" in French and English will be recommended for positions on the Supreme Court of Canada. With the information released subsequent to the nomination of Malcolm Rowe to the Court, we now have some sense of what this means. At a minimum, […]
Canada’s residential schools and the dangers of educational hubris
In 1953 the Canadian Geographical Society published a glossy black-and-white volume called "Image of Canada." It has the usual inspiring pictures of Saskatchewan wheat fields and Toronto city lights; of majestic glaciers and mighty log booms. The book also contains images that open a window to the past, and let us see the world through 1950s eyes. […]
What is investment today worth tomorrow?
Once upon a time, canals were the latest thing in infrastructure investment. During the early years of the Industrial Revolution, they made it possible to move heavy goods, like coal, from mines to factories, using a fraction of the energy required by road transport. Delicate goods, like pottery, could be shipped with little breakage. Enterprising engineers and industrialists built […]
The educational smorgasbord
At the Green Door restaurant, customers line up, take a plate, then fill it with their choice of items from the restaurant's vegetarian buffet. At the cash each plate is weighed, and the customer's bill is calculated: price per gram*grams of food taken=cost of dinner. This pricing scheme creates an interesting choice problem. It might […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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