Opinion

Parkland Institute Director Trevor Harrison looks at the history and limitations of liberalism in this Winnipeg Free Press op-ed.

Parkland Institute Director Trevor Harrison offers three possible solutions to the impending crisis of work that his being brought about by increased automation.

Canada, writes Parkland Institute Director Trevor Harrison, is about to relearn the truth in the old maxim, "States do not have friends; they have interests."

Parkland Institute Director Trevor Harrison responds to an August 25, 2016 editorial in the Calgary Herald which accused the Alberta government of "blithely following a path of reckless borrowing."

"There is no easy way out of Alberta’s fiscal mess," writes Parkland Institute Director Trevor Harrison. "Alberta must find new revenue streams and must break free of oil dependency. The transition will be hard."

"We should all be skeptical when the national interest is too easily invoked," writes Trevor Harrison. "Appeals to national interest too often cloak what is, in fact, self-interest."

Alberta must bring in a harmonized sales tax. This is the conclusion reached by myself and 18 economists, political scientists, sociologists and other public policy experts in an article that recently ran in two major Alberta newspapers. Why did we say this?

Put simply, there is no realistic alternative if the province hopes to return to a balanced budget and pay for necessary services.

“Please Lord, give me another oil boom, and I promise not to p… it away!” said a popular Alberta bumper sticker in the 1980s.

I interviewed Stephen Harper in the fall of 1991 as part of my doctoral research into the Reform party. Of all the things he said at that time, the comment that has stuck most with me was that it was undesirable for a governing party to garner more than optimum electoral support; beyond that meant it owed too much to too many voters.