Medicare is the third rail of Canadian politics. Touch it and you die. Every politician knows this truism, which is why no one wants to debate it. Privately, many of them understand that the health care system, which costs about $200 billion a year in public and private money, cannot continue as it is-increasingly ill-adapted to an aging population with public costs growing faster than government revenues. In Chronic Condition, Jeffrey Simpson meets health care head on and explores the onl...

Here’s a clear, believable book for Canadians concerned about our situation — and it offers a solution.It’s a brilliant mix. To “Canada’s best mind on the environment,” Mark Jaccard, who won the 2006 Donner Prize for an academic book in this area, you add Nic Rivers, a researcher who works with him at Simon Fraser University. Then you add Jeffrey Simpson, the highly respected Globe and Mail columnist, to punch the message home in a clear, hard-hitting way. The result is a ...

Is Canada a dictatorship – albeit a friendly dictatorship? In this thoughtful book, Jeffrey Simpson argues that the Liberal Party’s re-election to a third majority government must raise the question: Is Canada in danger of becoming a de facto one-party state, ruled by an all-powerful leader?An effective parliamentary system presumes that at least one party is ready and capable of replacing the existing government by winning an election. Clearly, no party was ready in the last elect...

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease known as COVID-19, has infected people in 212 countries so far and on every continent except Antarctica.Vast changes to our home lives, social interactions, government functioning and relations between countries have swept the world in a few months and are difficult to hold in one’s mind at one time. That is why a collaborative effort such as this edited, multidisciplinary collection is needed. This book confronts the vulne...

For all Canadians, a blueprint on the state of Canadian pensions, the crisis we are faced with, and solutions to fix it - from the foremost expert on the subject.Over the next 20 years more than 7 million Canadian workers will retire. Baby boomers, the 45- to 65-year-olds who account for 42% of the country's workforce, will join the largest job exodus in Canadian history, moving the promised land of retirement. Unless our crumbling pension system is reformed, many o...

For almost its entire history, Canada has been run by the political, media and business elites of Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. But in the past few years, these groups have lost their power—and most of them still do not realize it’s gone. The Laurentian Consensus, the term John Ibbitson has coined for the dusty liberal elite, has been replaced by a new, powerful coalition based in the West and supported by immigrant voters in Ontario. How did this happen?Most people are unaware tha...

A sly, insightful and wonderfully original book from one of Canada's most popular political analysts, Chantal Hébert, and one of Quebec's top political broadcasters, Jean Lapierre.Only the most fearless of political journalists would dare to open the old wounds of the 1995 Quebec referendum, a still-murky episode in Canadian history that continues to defy our understanding. The referendum brought one of the world's most successful democracies to the brink of the unk...

From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower, a searching and provocative examination of the widespread institutional rot that threatens our collective futureWhat causes rich countries to lose their way? Symptoms of decline are all around us today: slowing growth, crushing debts, increasing inequality, aging populations, antisocial behavior. But what exactly has gone wrong? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues in

WINNER 2014 – Ottawa Book Award for Non-FictionThe definitive portrait of Stephen Harper in power by this country’s most trenchant, influential and surprising political commentator.Oh, he won, but he won’t last. Oh, he may win again but he won’t get a majority. Oh, his trick bag is emptying fast, the ads are backfiring, the people are onto him, and soon his own party will turn on him. And let me tell you, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy . . ....

In an unparalleled collaboration, two leading global thinkers in technology and foreign affairs give us their widely anticipated, transformational vision of the future: a world where everyone is connected—a world full of challenges and benefits that are ours to meet and to harness.Eric Schmidt is one of Silicon Valley’s great leaders, having taken Google from a small startup to one of the world’s most influential companies. Jared Cohen is the director of Google Ideas and a former a...

Over its twenty years with president and CEO Rick George at the helm, Suncor Energy went from being Canada’s “unluckiest oil company” to a stock market darling and the second-largest publicly traded corporation in the country. Both a contrarian and an optimist, George often made multibillion-dollar moves despite deep skepticism within the industry. His $2.8-billion expansion into the oil sands ignited massive growth in Canada’s most valuable, and controversial, natural resource. And his $1...

A forceful argument against America's vicious circle of growing inequality by the Nobel Prize–winning economist.The top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. And, as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains, while those at the top enjoy the best health care, education, and benefits of wealth, they fail to realize that “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”Stiglitz draws on his deep understanding of economics to show that growing inequali...