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Category: Government

The “Not Enough Engineers” Canard

Yesterday I suggested that Ottawa might be as much of the problem in innovation policy as it is the solution.  Today I want to make a much stronger policy claim: that Canada has a uniquely stupid policy discourse on innovation.   And as Exhibit A in this argument I want to present a piece posted over at Policy Options last week. The article was written by Kat Nejatian, a former staffer to Jason Kenney and now CEO of a payment technology company

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February 28, 2017 2 Comments

Can Ottawa Do Innovation?

The National Post’s David Akin had a useful article last week entitled Canada Has Failed at Innovation for 100 years: Can The Trudeau Government Change That?  Read it, it’s good.  It’s based around a new-ish Peter Nicholson article in Canadian Public Policy which is unfortunately not available without a subscription.  But Nicholson’s argument appears to be: we’ve done pretty well our entire history as a country copying or importing technology from Americans: what exactly is it that Ottawa is going

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February 27, 2017 4 Comments

Notes for the NDP Leadership Race

As contestants start to jump into the federal NDP leadership race, it’s only a matter of time before someone starts promising free tuition to all across the land.  Now, I’m not going to rehash why free tuition is both regressive and undesirable (though if you really want to take a gander through the archives on free tuition, have a look here).  But I do think I can do some public service by talking about federalism and higher education, or rather:

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February 22, 2017 4 Comments

How to Fund (1)

Over the next three days, I want to talk about funding formulas.  I know I did this a couple of years ago, at the start of the Ontario funding formula review exercise (see here, here, and here, but it’s worth revisiting  partly because I’m cheesed off at how Ontario managed to botch the review, but also, it’s because I’ve been looking at funding formulas in Europe and the US for article I’ve been writing, and it’s absolutely stunning to me how

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February 14, 2017 No Comments

Skills and Youth

What with the Advisory Council on Growth’s paper on skills, and the Expert Panel on Youth Employment wrapping up, public policy is suddenly back to a focus on skills – and in particular what skills youth should have.  So, let’s talk about that. While some in the federal government will state forcefully that they are not – repeat NOT- going to be like the previous government and tell students what fields they should study (read: welding), literally every time skills

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February 9, 2017 3 Comments

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One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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