This time last year, we were talking about the temporary end to the transfer of COVID-19 patients to CHSLDs, Quebec’s long-term care centres. The patient transfers, however, resumed a month later.
Le véritable désastre des CHSLD sera à tout jamais un exemple criant des limitations du modèle québécois en matière de santé et de soins aux personnes âgées.
Nearly one year ago, the Quebec government decreed a temporary end to the transfer of COVID-19 patients to CHSLDs, Quebec’s long-term care centres. To this day, Quebec’s extremely high death count among seniors in CHSLDs continues to raise eyebrows. This publication from the Montreal Economic Institute calls into question the inevitability of these deaths.
COVID-19: One year later, Florida offers an illuminating case study of what might have been here in Quebec and across Canada.
After Huffington Post’s recent purchase by US-based Buzzfeed, Huffington Post Canada and Huffington Post Quebec blindsided employees with mass layoffs in a cost-cutting move.
It is not only fair to compensate airlines for policy mandates, it is critical for the health and well-being of Canadian society.
Our health professionals are doing their best, but Canada’s capacity problems are structural, and need structural solutions.
February 4, 2021 | 14 min. 20 sec. | The Dan Proft Show (AM 560) Interview with Peter St. Onge, Senior Fellow […]
In this era of frayed international relationships, rising unemployment and struggling industries, it is more important than ever to allow people to trade with each other without asking a bureaucrat’s permission.
Instead of inflexible rules that dissipate limited resources, we need focus: a careful assessment of where restrictions have the most impact, and where rapid testing can be best used to fend off outbreaks.
Les tests et le dépistage de la COVID-19 au Canada ont jusqu’à présent été globalement médiocres.
It’s not the headlines that kill, it’s the many burdens caused by lockdowns that render small businesses unprofitable.
The Quebec government has announced stricter lockdown rules before the holidays. Yet repeated lockdowns, even if partial, are likely to inflict the effects of an economic depression on SMEs rather than those of a simple recession. This Economic Note prepared by Peter St. Onge in collaboration with Maria Lily Shaw paints a worrisome picture.
Pandemic’s damage to the economy and to our mental and physical health could have been greatly reduced if our health-care system was more efficient.
December 2, 2020 | 20 min. 47 sec. | Danielle Smith Show (Global News Radio) Interview with Peter St. Onge, Senior Fellow […]
Our health care system is hard-pressed to withstand the repeated blows of the pandemic. One of the issues highlighted by the health crisis is the urgent need for more hospital beds, as Canada lags behind many other countries in this regard. This research paper prepared by Peter St. Onge in collaboration with Maria Lily Shaw, proposes some concrete solutions.
In Friday’s Financial Post, Philip Cross makes the important point that it is delusional to think that rivers of new deficit spending will not lead to middle-class tax hikes.
A dialogue of the deaf has been going on for months now between those who support lockdowns and those who have doubts about their effectiveness. Both camps often display a lack of civility, with insults flying in all directions. It is therefore quite difficult to find a good summary of the arguments of both sides. It is with a view to addressing this lack and helping people make up their own minds that the MEI has prepared this debate between two experienced economists on the costs and benefits of lockdowns.
Restaurateurs and other merchants are worried. While most of them are already out of steam, the government has just announced that as of Thursday, it will close bars, restaurant dining rooms, concert halls, and theatres in red zones.
August 13, 2020 | 15 min. 25 sec. | Danielle Smith Show (Global News Radio) Interview with Peter St. Onge, Senior Fellow […]
Bill 30, by opening the door to more entrepreneurship in care delivery within the province’s universal health care system, is a step in the right direction.
Alberta’s legislature passed Bill 30, the Health Statutes Amendment Act, on July 29. Considering Alberta’s underperforming health care system, the proposed reforms amount to a small step in the right direction according to the authors of this publication by the Montreal Economic Institute.
US media is excited about a potential “second wave” of cases coming from places like Florida that largely avoided the first wave.
Sweden never locked down its economy, yet it succeeded in “flattening the curve,” whereas severe lockdowns in New York, as in Quebec, did not.
Lockdown measures were put in place hastily and, apparently, without considering their economic and social costs. In this publication, researchers attempt to quantify the impact of lockdown measures.
Before midMarch, for most Canadians COVID-19 was a remote concern, with a single COVID-19 death in Canada, a B.C. man in his 80s with underlying health problems. Then, suddenly, the world changed.
The academic journal Nature recently published two papers on the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on COVID-19.
In a recent study, we mentioned that even the World Health Organization (WHO) had been strongly arguing against lockdowns for flu pandemics as recently as October 2019.
The economic catastrophe due in large part to physical distancing measures has led the various levels of government to implement relief measures. This MEI publication provides a critical look at the relief measures currently in effect all while identifying the principles that should guide government action. The researchers notably observe that measures aiming to preserve employment links, like wage subsidies, are the most conducive to rapid economic recovery.
If this entire lockdown was some tragic mistake based on a single dodgy prediction, we must make sure that it never happens again.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the leading US health agency for infectious diseases, released a dramatic downward revision to their estimate of COVID-19 fatality.
Restrictions continue to be gradually eased in Canada, but as there is talk of a second wave, it is more important than ever to question the case for lockdown. This MEI publication provides a critique of Professor Neil Ferguson’s epidemiological model, which led to lockdown in this country.
May 22, 2020 | 19 min. 51 sec. | Danielle Smith (Global Radio) Interview with Peter St. Onge, Senior Fellow at the […]
Tuesday, The Guardian profiled Hong Kong, which never locked down, yet only has four COVID-19 deaths out of a nearly Quebec-sized population.
Yesterday, Bloomberg reported new data from Oxford University researchers who analyzed the severity of lockdown measures in place in European countries.
Every day, Canadians are informed via press conference of the number of new deaths attributed to COVID-19. This publication by the Montreal Economic Institute raises questions about the accuracy of these statistics.
In a paper released in late April, researchers estimate that simply wearing masks is potentially much more impactful than even indefinite economic lockdowns.
The author of the main study justifying worldwide Covid lockdowns, dubbed “Dr. Lockdown” in the media, has a history of dramatically overestimating deaths.
Earlier this week, the Institute for Liberal Studies (ILS) hosted a talk by Dr. Stephen Davies, Head of Education at the Institute for Economic Affairs, on what to expect in a post-pandemic world.
More and more people are arguing in favour of a kind of “Marshall Plan” of government intervention after the coronavirus crisis. MEI Fellow Peter St Onge argues that Canada needs the exact opposite.
We are now witnessing an outpouring of volunteers across Canada going door-to-door to offer supplies and help to people in need of help—the vulnerable, seniors, those who may be scared or confused.
As the coronavirus continues to spread, calls are rising for aggressive stimulus to fight the economic fallout.
Alors que la COVID-19 continue de se propager à travers le Canada, on en appelle de plus en plus à des mesures budgétaires coûteuses pour contrer ses répercussions économiques.
As COVID-19 continues to spread across Canada, a rising chorus is calling for expensive fiscal stimulus to fight its economic fallout. This MEI publication asserts that given already low interest rates, fiscal measures are the textbook response.
As coronavirus spreads, there are excellent models in Asia that Canada can look to. Taiwan, for one, has so far succeeded in effectively fighting the coronavirus.
A few weeks ago, the MEI made the case for protecting part-time workers. Those jobs are a much-needed first rung on the ladder for many Canadians, especially the young and the vulnerable.
If Canada becomes a place where investors are scared off lest they lose their humans rights as soon as they organize into a company, we will all suffer tremendously.
Canada’s system of socialized medicine has created high taxes and suffering patients. That’s not what Americans want or deserve.
Too often, lawmakers propose reforms that might sound good, but actually make the problem worse. Instead of making it harder to hire freelancers and parttime workers, lawmakers should be making it easier.
La liberté de contracter et de travailler à sa guise n’est pas seulement un droit fondamental, c’est aussi l’un des moyens les plus efficaces d’aider les travailleurs marginaux qui ont besoin de ce premier échelon.
Will Canada import California’s job-killing experiment and risk putting freelance work out of the reach of Canadians who need it? This MEI publication shows that forcing companies to consider freelance workers as employees could reduce these workers’ incomes and deprive many of them of this first rung on the jobs ladder.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation released a study finding that 43,000 Quebec public sector workers earn $100,000 or more.
February 5, 2020 | 12 min. 30 sec. | Afternoons with Rob Breakenridge (Newstalk 770 CHQR) Interview with Peter St. Onge, Senior […]
Canadians wait 630 more days than Americans before new drugs are approved and another 473 before public plans list them.
Ottawa has the prices of drugs in its sights. On the one hand, it has made changes to the calculation method for the price ceilings imposed on drugs sold in Canada. On the other, the idea of national government pharmacare to replace the provinces’ mixed plans is still in the air. These ill-advised public policies could actually raise total health care spending, while threatening Canadians’ access to the best available treatments, shows this publication by the MEI.
A new Stanford University study finds California’s “soak the rich” tax hike drove outmigration of the rich up by 40%.
Une taxe sur le numérique cause plus de problèmes qu’elle n’en résout et risque de nuire aux consommateurs, aux entreprises canadiennes et à l’économie du pays dans son ensemble.
Taxing foreign companies causes more problems than it solves and risks hurting Canadian consumers and companies.
During the last federal election campaign, all parties promised to raise taxes on the digital giants. This publication shows that the so-called GAFA companies have been taxed at a level similar to or higher than large Canadian corporations, and that it will be consumers and the Canadian economy in general that would pay for such a measure.
Yesterday the US and China announced a “Phase 1” trade deal that commits Beijing to buying an additional $100 billion per year in goods from the US. Some worry that this may shut Canadian exporters out of the Chinese market.
Some environmentalists are upset that rights-of-way for power lines will threaten Maine’s forests.
Il est temps d’aller au-delà du faux dilemme entre l’universalité et le modèle américain, et de regarder vers l’Europe
By one estimate, at any given moment, over one million Canadians — three per cent of the entire population — are waiting for a medical treatment.
Despite decades of animated public debates and the colossal sums spent—which keep on increasing—waiting times for Canadian patients continue to worsen, notes this study published by the MEI.
Electric vehicles get the headlines but, at $63,000 and paltry carbon savings, they are not ready for prime-time.
The best way for liberalization to happen is for a province or territory to act unilaterally to end its own barriers.
While Canada continues to negotiate free trade agreements with numerous countries, the provinces maintain obstacles to trade within our own borders. The MEI and the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) have listed them from best to worst in a ranking of Canadian provinces and territories by their openness to internal trade.
In an editorial in Le Devoir one year ago, Jean-Robert Sansfaçon ridiculed those of us who warned that a lower American corporate tax would drain capital from Canada.
Canada has avoided the great die-off of public companies afflicting American business especially since the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which imposed new, more restrictive accounting and financial transparency rules. But with trends reversing somewhat since 2012, much work remains to be done in Canada to promote access to investment opportunities for the middle class. This would not only further democratize wealth-building for regular Canadians, but also give start-ups even greater ability to raise funds to grow their business.
The Securities and Exchange Commission could end up killing the public markets it is supposed to protect.
The Securities and Exchange Commission could end up killing the public markets it is supposed to protect.
