 
November 21, 2005
The Black Rod's Power Failure
Excerpt: "Peter Holle, president of the Frontier Centre, a private think tank most people would assume promotes free enterprise, opposes the NDP's natural gas program because it's not socialist enough." Our response: Your post discussing the Frontier Centre’s work on energy policy was way off the grid. Such blatantly sloppy scribbling tarnishes your blog’s reputation for inciteful and accurate writing. The Frontier Centre does believe that means-tested, income-based subsidies are a better way to protect the poor from market fluctuations and price spikes than across-the-board subsidies. So does every free-market economist ever born. Do we think we should subsidize the middle class, as the Black Rod says? Must have missed that thought when we wrote they should pay the full market rate for energy sources like electricity and natural gas. Does that mean we want to “let the government change private behaviour for your own good”? If that means government gets out of setting prices of any kind, yes, we’re guilty. What happened here? Perhaps the writer on shift – you describe yourself as citizen journalists in Winnipeg who break stories ahead of mainstream media -- was playing hookey when the public school taught reading. Only someone who can’t read—would conclude from reading our energy materials that we want government to be larger or more powerful.  Related Items:
is an independent public policy think tank whose mission is "to broaden the debate on our future through public policy research and education and to explore positive changes within our public institutions that support economic growth and opportunity." |
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy 
