Sprawl in Toronto just got its biggest boost in 50 years, thanks to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's decision this week to stimulate the economy through a $9-billion spending spree on transportation infrastructure. Look for Toronto to bust out all over - North, East and West - in line with the major routes he promises to fund. And look for low-density sprawl to spread to Toronto's detriment, just as occurred with the uneconomic transportation infrastructure built in the past.  Full story »

Canadians are becoming more and more dependent on the automobile, Stats-Can told us last week, citing figures showing that 74% of Canadians are full-time drivers, up from 70% in 1998 and 68% in 1992.

This trend, a natural consequence of suburban sprawl, is only to be expected. Our governments spend billions to promote the use of suburbs.  Full story »

A Toronto megalopolis, 150 kilometres in girth, will be born of the Ontario provincial budget announced this week. The budget's big-ticket transportation projects will drive this outcome through measures that will undermine public transit in the city while accelerating suburban sprawl in the Greater Toronto Area and beyond. 

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Urban elites and the left have for decades savaged the suburb, arguing that the suburb is environmentally unsustainable, an aesthetic blight on the landscape, homogeneously white bread and morally defective.  Full story »

For the record, I don't think Martin Collacott is a racist. The Fraser Institute analyst complains in his recent paper (Canada's Immigration Policy: The Need for Major Reform) that critics of current immigration policy are often accused of racism, thus stifling what he believes is a much needed debate. The National Post, taking up his cause in an admiring editorial, urged "proponents of mass immigration" to "debate the subject substantively rather than resorting to slurs and questioning motives."  Full story »

Re: Bad Rural Medicine, April 25, 2002

The following are Letters to the Editor in response to Urban Renaissance Institute's Lawrence Solomon's article, "Bad Rural Medicine," published on April 25, 2002, in the National Post.

To read the article, click here.  Full story »

The average rural resident receives 50% more in welfare, employment insurance, old age security and other government transfers than he pays in taxes, Statistics Canada reports. The gap between taxes paid and cash transfers is even greater for the average resident of small towns – those with populations less than 30,000. But the gap closes fast for the average resident of larger communities. For cities with more than 100,000 people, the gap narrows to about 15%.  Full story »