Waiting lists stretching years. Plummeting quality. Outraged parents. Providers slowly strangled by red tape. The federal Liberals’ vaunted $10-a-day childcare program has proved an expensive disaster. Five years in, Matthew Lau digs into the many problems and inequities this landmark social policy has delivered. Lau finds B.C., which had a three-year head start on the rest of the country and an enthusiastic NDP government leading the way, in the worst straits of all. With an irretrievably flawed system clearly failing Canadian families, Lau argues that Prime Minister Mark Carney should pivot to a fairer, cheaper and more effective alternative.

It has become widely accepted that capitalism has failed – that free markets exploit workers, hammer consumers and can’t be trusted as the bedrock of a liberal democracy. It’s why an unrepentant “democratic” socialist, Zohran Mamdani, can be elected mayor of New York and why Mark Carney can produce a budget with massive spending and increased government meddling yet still be hailed as a prudent manager. Matthew Lau isn’t having it. In this incisive critique, Lau demolishes four myths driving the modern attack on capitalism and explains how it is only free markets that make people richer, happier and more equal.

Low prices and high volumes can be a successful business model in the right hands. Just think Costco or Walmart. But should anyone trust government to pull off such a strategy? As the early returns on the Trudeau Liberals’ $10-a-day childcare program reveal, Ottawa is utterly incapable of delivering on such a promise. While offering childcare at a fraction of its true cost has led to a massive increase in demand, the country is now beset by disastrous childcare shortages and ever-lengthening waiting lists. In fact, more parents are looking after their own kids at home now than was the case in 2019. As Matthew Lau reports, there’s a solution to Canada’s childcare supply woes, but the Liberals refuse to consider it.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a good chart can explain billions. With just a few simple lines, a chart can bring complicated economic facts into sharp focus – revealing, for example, the growing gap in living standards between Canada and the U.S. since 2015. Or the $127 billion in excess spending by the federal Liberals even before the pandemic hit. Or the impact of the recent spike in inflation. Using seven custom-created charts, Matthew Lau illustrates and explains the financial devastation wrought by the Trudeau government’s fiscal policies throughout the Canadian economy. Troublingly, Lau’s final three charts suggest the worst is yet to come.

Erin O’Toole became leader of the Conservative Party of Canada on the strength of his Big Tent vision for the party. But how big should that tent be? Recently O’Toole surprised commentators by extolling the benefits of the union movement and repeating many of its claims as Conservative policy. Matthew Lau charts the origin of this unorthodox political strategy, and its worrisome economic implications. If the Conservatives want to attract workers’ votes, he argues, they should start by recognizing the damage done by unions to growth and job creation.

Would beloved comic actor John Candy have lived longer if government forced him to eat less? What about Orson Welles? Or Luciano Pavarotti? Perhaps. Would they have been happier or more successful? We’ll never know the answer to the first, and as to the second, almost certainly not. Candy built his career around a lovable portliness, Welles often played menacing fat men and Pavarotti’s girth helped him belt out arias. A few extra pounds, in other words, offers both advantages and disadvantages − and it should be up to the individual to decide how to balance the scales. As governments ramp up policies designed to put their citizenry on a diet, Matthew Lau sallies forth in defence of eating what you want, and exercising only when you feel the need.

Government deficits are soaring, the economy is reeling and the restart is slow and halting. Nobody knows what lies ahead. How the federal Liberals plan to handle Canada’s tectonic shift in public debt is anybody’s guess. In Part I of this two-part report, Matthew Lau described the challenge our country faces and evaluated two of the most destructive options for dealing with the Covid-debt. In Part II, Lau sets out what would happen if Ottawa decides to engineer a return of high inflation, and then explores more practical options for addressing our enormous post-pandemic indebtedness – including the one method that has worked decisively at the federal and provincial levels.

In many ways these are magical times. Governments seemingly exist to protect us from all harm and negative consequences. When a pandemic hits, the existing gusher of public spending becomes an unchecked torrent, interest rates are lowered to effectively zero, yet inflation remains caged. Almost any item large or small can be purchased with instant credit on easy terms. Individuals, organizations and groups in trouble are showered with financial beneficence. But where is the money actually coming from? Who, if anyone, is to pay for it all? Can nothing bad come of the unprecedented profligacy? Matthew Lau reminds us that reality will reassert itself and when the spell is broken at last, potentially ruinous consequences lie in wait. Lau evaluates the options available to debt-burdened governments – most of them bad. Part I of a two-part analysis.

Clear skies in once-smoggy L.A. Wildlife wandering through cities and bedding down in parks. Deserted streets. Idled factories. For the left, the pandemic has created a convenient waypoint on their path to utopia. To the rest of us, it has furnished a nightmarish vision of a potentially destitute future, and a wakeup call to focus on what it might take to revive our economy. For Matthew Lau, the choice is clear. And while news media reports continue to promote fanciful progressive agendas, Lau sees encouraging signs that the imperatives of survival will enable practicality and common sense to prevail.

Pursuing grandiose visions tends to cloud judgment, and when the vision is saving our very planet from an apprehended climate crisis, it’s little surprise that numbers are fudged, logic is twisted, the hardest-hit are ignored and entire social classes are cast into the trash. Matthew Lau, however, refuses to be dazzled by dreams. In this article, Lau remains rooted in reality and fixed on crunching the numbers to come up with some arresting conclusions about the huge costs of government climate policies to working people here and now, set against marginal if not ephemeral benefits to come over the next 80 years.