The importance of dental health cannot be overestimated. A report released today calls for a checkup on dentistry in Alberta and across Canada, and Dr. Carlos Quinonez says a new vision for dental care is needed to address issues of access.

The current whistleblower protection act falls far short of international best practices for whistleblower protection. Worse, the legislation, and its interpretation by the Office of the Public Interest Commissioner that investigates complaints, is laced with pitfalls through which few whistleblowers should ever dare to venture.

A new report by the Parkland Institute reveals how decades of declining public investment in health care entrench political attitudes that prioritize cutting costs and privatizing services at the expense of working conditions and quality of care.

This Op-ed by Trevor Harrision was published in the Edmonton Journal on September 3, 2020.

Echoing Biblical prophecy, Premier Jason Kenney has repeatedly said Alberta is headed for a “fiscal reckoning.” Finance Minister Travis Toews’ recent grim account of Alberta’s financial plight – a deficit of $24.2 billion and a provincial debt climbing to $99.6 billion–sets the stage for the UCP’s budgetary punishment this fall.

Whether the fall budget will see an honest reckoning or merely a further wrecking of the Alberta economy remains to be seen, but the signs are not hopeful.

As the Alberta government launches its Alberta 2030 review of the post-secondary education system, a new report from the Corporate Mapping Project and the Parkland Institute raises big questions related to universities’ fulfillment of their public interest mandate. Authored by Laurie Adkin, a political economist at the University of Alberta, Knowledge for an Ecologically Sustainable Future? Innovation Policy and Alberta Universities examines the implications of the research funding priorities of the federal and provincial governments for the production of the knowledge needed for an ecologically sustainable economy and society.

As details emerge about the working and living conditions of immigrant and temporary foreign workers in Alberta’s meatpacking industry and their link to COVID-19 outbreaks in those plants, a new report by the Parkland Institute highlights the even greater challenges faced by migrant workers in Alberta who have lost their status.

This op-ed by Parkland Institute director Trevor Harrison appeared in the Edmonton Journal on April 16, 2020.

As debate continues to rage over pipelines for Alberta’s oil, a new Corporate Mapping Project report analyzes how the oil sands industry, in the early years of the mature phase of its business lifecycle, is producing more bitumen with less capital and fewer jobs.

This op-ed by Parkland Institute director Trevor Harrison appeared in the Edmonton Journal on January 25, 2020.

Despite growing popularity for the idea, providing a “basic income” as a way to deal with emerging societal challenges—the rise of the gig economy, artificial intelligence and other technological changes in the workplace, and high levels of unemployment and precarity—is unlikely to be a panacea in the absence of a well-funded social safety net, according to a new report released today by the University of Alberta’s Parkland Institute.