In Quebec, as in many other places in the world, a permit is required to provide taxi services. For a long time, this has led to a lack of competition and the resulting effects. The Quebec government will soon table a bill to modernize the taxi industry. On which principles should new regulation be based if it is also to serve as a framework for future innovations in the sector?

A New Canadian Partnership for domestic free trade could produce economic benefits for Canadians that rival those of international free trade agreements. That’s the conclusion of Professor Ian Brodie, political scientist at the University of Calgary, in a new public policy study for the Montreal Economic Institute, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) and the Canadian Constitution Foundation.

Health professionals should be able to use all their skills.

Health professionals should be able to use all their skills.

Quebec’s Health Minister recently announced that she wanted specialized nurse practitioners (SNPs) to be able to make diagnoses, as is the case everywhere else in Canada. The Collège des médecins du Québec (CMQ) ended up making peace with the idea, while the Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens du Québec (FMOQ) is still not on board, claiming that this act must be reserved to physicians. Is this resistance justified?

The theory of predatory pricing.

Quebec Premier François Legault has often stated his desire to attract foreign investment into the province and to increase Quebecers’ standard of living. An essential precondition for this is to create an economic environment that is more favourable to productivity growth, considered by economists to be the main determinant of rising living standards in the long term. This can be achieved by reducing the amount of room taken up by the government in the economy, through a decrease in public spending.

In its last Fall Economic Statement, the federal government included a chapter on regulation. It intends to review and remove outdated or duplicative regulatory requirements, keep an eye on our regulatory burden’s effect on our competitiveness, and innovate when it comes to rule-making. While this is a welcome admission that the Canadian regulatory burden is weighing down our competitiveness, with the United States as an easy alternative destination for investment, it still leaves open the question of how exactly to proceed with effectively reducing the regulatory burden.

Deregulation in the United States is not fake news.

The Quebec government has on many occasions signalled its commitment to fighting climate change. The province has set several targets for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, aiming to have them disappear almost completely by 2050. Yet Quebec’s share of global GHG emissions is so tiny that achieving the provincial objectives would have an insignificant impact on the evolution of the temperature of the planet.