In 2013, Canadians worked until June 10, which happens to be Tax Freedom Day, to pay all their taxes. Tax Freedom Day is an easy-to-understand measure of the total tax burden imposed on Canadian families by federal, provincial, and local governments. But the true tax burden doesn't end with the revenues that governments collect.

The results of a national education survey show that a large majority of Canadians want legal restrictions on party leader powers to give more freedom and power to politicians in each party, while only 20 per cent do not want these legal restrictions. So how could these powers be restricted?

What is happening in both the House of Commons and the Senate at the moment represents a serious enough threat to our democracy that we require remedial efforts in real time, far in advance of whatever constitutional refinements to these institutions that might lie in the future. Our focus should be upon the selection process for Senators, at least in the interim.

Mayor Rob Ford's stubborn refusal to address substantively the allegations of drug use, and the reputational contagion and distraction it has caused, needs to be addressed in short order. In a corporate setting, a Chief Executive engaging in similar patterns of behavior would not be tolerated by any board of directors. The CEO would have been fired long ago.

Quebec's political leaders seem to have fallen for the Great Green Dream of economic prosperity without energy or natural resource production. It's a magical vision of a world powered by unicorns and rainbows, where consumer goods are somehow conjured out of thin air rather than being manufactured with resources extracted from the ground. But experience in Europe shows that chasing the green dream is a path to financial ruin, not utopia. Quebec's one-two punch to energy and natural resource production is most likely to hurt the province itself more than the industries who might invest there.

A municipal politician told my graduate class when he spoke about accountability in public office this week that politicians have the ability to make ...

The actual risk of young people getting melanoma is tiny compared with the risks of everyday activities that we don't think twice about allowing kids to engage in. We could prevent far more teen deaths and injuries by outlawing teenaged skating, swimming and driving than by outlawing teenaged tanning.

One of Canada's biggest public policy challenges is a coming wave of retiring baby boomers. This will increase the draw on Old Age Security, the Guaranteed Income Supplement, the Canada Pension Plan, and other social programs such as health care while the number of workers left to fund it all will shrink. To enhance economic performance and boost productivity, governments have reached into their policy playbooks.

OTTAWA - Stephen Harper, we hardly know you.Almost seven years after Harper led his Conservatives to office and ended more than a decade of uninterrup...

We all know that Quebec is sensitive on language issues. But Pauline Marois' plan to require anyone running for public office to be proficient in French should outrage everyone who believes in democracy. It's fine to expect anyone applying for a government job in Quebec to be competent in the official language of the province. But to restrict running for elected office to only French-speakers is arrogant, dictatorial and unnecessary.

In July, Canada's provincial and territorial premiers will be meeting as the Council of the Federation and a report from the federation's healthcare innovation working group will be on the agenda.

Are Alberta MLAs superior to all others in Canada, who are paid less? Justice Major made a case for not placing too much emphasis on inter-provincial comparisons due to Alberta's unique economic situation. There is something to this, since our oil and gas sector wages are relatively high.

To me, the Romney versus Obama election looks like a dud -- boring, dull and simply, nowhere nearly as exciting as what's going on here in Canada. We have a PM who loves being the villain, a bulldog opposition leader, and a liberal willing to beat the crap out (literally!) of someone for political points.