Second Week in Regina / Trip to Calgary / Fifth Week of Internship

It was an awesome start to my penultimate week. Sunday evening my team, The New York Giants, won Superbowl XLVI in a nail-biting game, I spent Monday pretty much beaming. It was made all the better by the fact that the 14 hour time zone difference between Regina and Perth meant that my friends were watching the Monday evening telecast of the game while I was having breakfast on Monday morning. It was a brilliant start to a solid week.

Earlier in my internship at Frontier I had been invited by the Centre’s Director of Research, Marco Navarro-Genie to visit his base-of-operations in Calgary. The plan was for me to fly across at the end of the week and spend my final days in Canada working in Calgary. This meant that my time in Regina would be cut short. It was a bitter sweet decision. It would be awesome to visit Calgary but I had really acclimatised to Regina. In the week-and-a-half I spent in Saskatchewan’s capital I had set up a little routine and was enjoying my time working with Frontier’s policy analyst in the province, Steve La Fleur. I had come to like the unique atmosphere of Regina. I mentioned in my last blog post that Saskatchewan is beginning to benefit from a mining boom and all the Reginians I met had a very noticeable ‘boom mentality’. Reginians have a much more ‘go-gettem’ attitude and are even more positive and welcoming than the average Canadian. This entrepreneurial spirit can only bode well for Regina and Saskatchewan. Ten years from now Regina is going to be an interesting place.

In between work and exploring Regina the week blitzed by and I found myself on Friday morning waiting to catch my flight to Calgary. Marco was waiting for me when I touched down in Calgary and took me on a short tour of the city. I have a theory that you can diagnose the economic and social well being of a city by looking at its airport. If a city is trundling along nicely then the airport is generally a pretty comfortable affair. If a city is in a bit of a downturn the airport tends to be a little underwhelming. Calgary is clearly a city which is booming. In the last decade the Calgary airport has almost doubled in size and there are constant expansions planned for the next decade – an almost identical situation to Perth. In many respects Calgary and Perth are kindred spirits. Both cities are reaping the benefits of a mining boom, the only significant difference is the climate.

I’ve settled down in a hotel on the University of Calgary campus and next week will be concluding my internship. Attached are a couple of photos. One photo is of the Saskatchewan Legislative building taken from a viewing platform on Wascana Lake, a short walk from the Frontier offices in Regina. The other photo is of Marco Navarro-Genie, the Director of Research at the Frontier Centre next to an ‘erratic’, a gigantic boulder which was deposited in its current position by a glacier.

Legislative Building in Regina

Marco with Boulder

First Week in Regina / Fourth Week of Internship

This week saw me travel across the prairies from Winnipeg to Saskatoon and then Regina. We struck out early Monday afternoon and drove for most of the day. The prairies are incredibly flat. I could track the powerlines (or ‘hyrdopoles’ as they call them over here) that were built along the side of the highway and watch them bend over the horizon and disappear. Because the land is so flat the nine hour drive to Saskatoon was actually very relaxing. I had my faced pressed up against the window as I watched the prairies go past which caused no end of amusement for Darla. In all honesty there is absolutely nothing on the prairies except grain fields, for Darla and anyone who had made the drive before it was very dull scenery, but the panorama was so new to me that I even took photos.

The reason for the trip to Saskatoon was to have a Frontier presence on the final leg of David Seymour’s book tour. David had, for the last couple of years, been Frontier’s man in Saskatchewan. During his last year he wrote a book celebrating Saskatchewan’s recent mineral boom and arguing for the liberalisation of public policy. Saskatoon is about a quarter the size of Winnipeg, so it sits in this interesting limbo between small town and big city. That’s basically the story of Saskatchewan as well, a small province about to leap into the position of a major player. David’s book was a very well timed publication.

Early Tuesday we turned around and drove back to Regina. Regina is about the same size as Saskatoon but is a much prettier city. The Frontier office is perfectly located in the heart of Regina. The office is adjacent to a nice row of restaurants and bars and is only a 10 minute walk to downtown or a 15 minute walk to the city’s cultural centre.

This week has probably not been my most productive week so far. The competitive neutrality brief is almost finished and I have started work on a short piece which builds on an observation made by an American political commentator about increases in household wealth. My work on the competitive neutrality piece has been very interesting. As part of the productivity reforms of the 1990’s, the Federal and State governments of Australia empowered the Productivity Commission to require that governments treat private and government run businesses equally. These reforms never occurred in Canada. I’m continually astonished by the number of government run businesses. For example, the liquor stores in Saskatchewan are a provincial run franchise. There are only six official liquor stores servicing the 200,000 people of Regina. I can’t help but think of the potential for growth if the Province privatised their businesses.

Attached are a couple of photos. One is of the Saskatchewan branch of the Frontier Centre. The other is a nice example of what Regina looks like. Also linked is a short YouTube clip of an Australian (He’s the one in the beige poncho-looking-thing) hobbling down the Red River in Winnipeg, I believe I mentioned that story last week.

YouTube link – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP1RcX06jfc&feature=colike

Suburban Street in Regina

Frontier's Saskatchewan Office

Third Week in Winnipeg / Third Week of Internship

 This past week was my last in Winnipeg before I move to the Frontier Centre’s Regina office. And what a busy week it’s been. I finished off the Rent Control and Corporate Tax Rate summaries and submitted them for publication. I also helped with one of the Frontier Centre’s major policy projects, the Aboriginal Governance Index (AGI). The AGI is a unique survey of First Nation settlements. Respondents are asked about their perceptions of their local councils and the provincial and federal governments. I’ve also started working on two promising projects. I’ve begun gathering data for an extended paper on wage growth in the Canadian public service. I’ve also begun researching the Australian ‘competitive neutrality’ policy. This competitive neutrality research has the potential to be a big project so I’ll talk a bit more about that in a later blog entry.

 With my time in Winnipeg almost up I’ve made sure that I’ve jumped into every tourist trap I could find. I did the good tourist thing and bought some gaudy Canadian paraphernalia. But the real highlight was skating along the Red River. When the rivers freeze during the winter, ice hockey rinks and a ice skating path are constructed.  It was quite something to watch an ice hockey match in the middle of a river. The ice skating path winds its way along the river for a couple of miles and currently holds the Guinness World Record for the longest maintained ice path. Given that I’d get beaten to a pulp if I played ice hockey I elected to see how far I could get skating along the Red River. As a good Australian I had no idea how to ice skate, but I had a stack of fun, and I didn’t fall over!

 While skating I also experienced another awesome example of Canadian generosity. A couple of guys my own age were drinking a beer while skating. Noticing my inability to skate they pulled over and asked what was wrong. Admitting I was an Australian they immediately put a beer in my hand and engaged me in a discussion of whether Australian beer was better than Canadian beer. It’s bizarre, but after that beer I was a much better skater. So thanks to Lubey and Tess for perfectly completing my experience in Winnipeg.

 Below is a photo of me on the ice path under the Trans-Canada Highway. My mind still boggles at the thought of a body of water not dissimilar from the Canning River freezing solid.

There’s a stereotype that Canadians are unreasonably kind. I’ve never seen a stereotype which is so true. Because of the generosity of the people in the Frontier Centre and random strangers I had a truly Canadian week. On Thursday, Darla Hooker, the Director of Development here at Frontier managed to wrangle up a couple of tickets to see the local ice hockey team, the Winnipeg Jets. The Jets have only recently moved back to Winnipeg after a decade of disruption following the National Hockey League’s decision to relocate the team to Atlanta, Georgia. Because of the recent return, tickets to the Jets are incredibly difficult come by so I was exceedingly lucky to see them play. I’d never seen an ice hockey game played before and what little I’d seen on TV didn’t do the game justice. Ice hockey is ruthlessly fast, incredibly vicious, just-the-right amount-of-violent and surprisingly strategic. I had no idea what was going on at the beginning of the game, but by the end I was on my feet cheering for the Jets. It was even better because the Jets beat the Buffalo Sabres, 3-1.

On the weekend I was invited by a friend of Peter Holle, the Founder and President of the Frontier Centre, to go snow mobiling. The cabin I went to was ‘winterised’ and so the family visits most weekends during the winter and lives there during the summer holidays. I got picked up on the Friday evening and almost as soon as we got to the cabin I was thrown on the back of a snow mobile and taken on an introductory ride. It was -25 by the time we got back to the cabin and my helmet visor had frozen over so I spent the last couple of kilometres desperately holding on to my driver, unable to clearly see the trees or trails as they whizzed pass. The next day I got to drive a machine of my own. Thankfully my visor didn’t freeze over. Going across the lake, which was frozen solid, I hit 120 kilometres per hour. It was awesome.

Amongst all of these events I’ve also managed to squeeze in a good amount of work with Ben Eisen, the Assistant Research Director and Senior Policy Analyst at the Frontier Centre. The paper defending the consumption levels of developed countries is moving along nicely. In between working on this major project I’ve also been putting together a series of short summaries for the Frontier website. I’ve submitted an early draft of my summary of the recent reductions in the corporate tax rate here in Canada. Additionally, I’ve been tasked with summarising the very real problems which have emerged from applying rent control in Manitoba. Finally, I also managed to assist with a small paper the Frontier Centre is putting together which analyses the problems which have emerged from the application of carbon pricing policies internationally. It’s been a busy week.

Below are a couple of pictures from my second week in Winnipeg. The first is a quick shot I took of the Jets celebrating their victory. The second photo is from my adventure snow mobiling. I took it after we managed to get my machine out of the ditch I’d managed to drive it into.

Snow mobile!

Jets Hockey Game

It’s been a very mild week in Winnipeg, very mild indeed. It was actually five degrees above zero on the first day I was in the city. The locals were thrilled, the TV news was filled with stories about people doing Spring time activities, the golf course even organised an impromptu tournament! But pretty soon the temperature plummeted. On Thursday it was -22 but the wind chill knocked that down to a ‘feels like’ temperature of -30. It was so cold that on my walk to work my breath was condensing and freezing on my eye lashes!

Initially I thought that such a low temperature would basically prevent anyone from doing anything. But it’s actually not to difficult to cope with the extreme temperature. You just layer up, and wear a thick jacket. All the buildings are heated and people have special heaters for their cars. It can actually be pretty comfortable.

The Frontier Centre for Public Policy has offices a short walk from the apartment I’m staying in. The Winnipeg offices act as the headquarters for the think-tank but many of the analysts live in other cities. The think-tank relies heavily on Skype which makes for an interesting work environment. I’ve begun working on a number of fact checking exercises to help introduce me to how the Frontier Centre works. My major project has been examining how much the combined economies of Canada and the United States produce as a defence to the criticisms that North America consumes too much.

The photos below are a small snapshot of life in Winnipeg. The first photo is a view from the Frontier offices towards my apartment, notice how little snow is on the ground! The second photo is of The Forks, Winnipeg’s tourist centre, on a much colder day.

View from Offices in Winnipeg

The Forks, Winnipeg

This week was the final week of my internship with the Frontier Centre. After returning to Regina from my trip to Calgary, I worked hard to finish my second policy paper on Alberta Property Rights. The project itself took a little longer than I anticipated, but this was a good thing, as the final report contained more depth of analysis than I had originally planned. I edited the paper on Tuesday and submitted it to Marco, Frontier’s Director of Research, for final approval.

On Wednesday afternoon I said goodbye to Regina, Canada and the Frontier Centre and travelled to Washington D.C to attend the International Students for Liberty conference. I immediately fell in love with Washington D.C, it is an easy city to explore and I was able to take in some the sites and landmarks, such as the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, Capital Building and the Washington Monument. I also met up with some of Mannkal’s friends and supporters while in D.C. It was fantastic to chat to them about my Canadian experiences and current world issues.

The International Students for Liberty Conference was amazing! There were over 500 attendees, which is the biggest conference the organisation has held in its short history. It was exciting to see so many students passionate about libertarian principles, and everyone had a positive attitude when sharing and discussing their ideas, which was great to see. I had countless conversations with students about libertarian principles, the differences between Australia and the United States, and our various internship experiences. I got to meet more experienced libertarians who are at the top of their fields in research, academia and politics, which was really fascinating. I was also interviewed by the conference, which will hopefully appear on their website in the coming months.

Tomorrow I will travel to New York City before returning home at the end of the week. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy for all their support over the past few months. This has been the opportunity of a lifetime, and I will never forget the experiences I have had over the past several weeks. I hope I have done both organisations proud in my work and my efforts to promote free market principles, and I promise to continue to do this after returning home to Perth.

I also would like to thank any students who have been following my experiences, and I encourage anyone who is thinking of taking or applying for an international internship to do so. It is the opportunity of a lifetime and it offers you a chance to learn and experience more than you ever could as a tourist. I feel that I have learnt so much about Canada, the US, and about our own country by comparison, and I will cherish the experience I have had forever.

This week has been the busiest of my internship with the Frontier Centre. I have been lucky to sit in on a couple of breakfast and lunch meetings with David and a couple of Frontier supporters this week, which was really fantastic, and was a great opportunity to converse with some very experienced and well read Libertarians.

Over the weekend, David and I drove to Calgary and Banff, which is about 8 hours away from Regina. Calgary is often compared with Perth, as it is a city that is currently benefiting from a resources boom, so it was interesting to draw parallels between the two cities. While I was there, I met with Amanda, who has just started work for Frontier as an intern on a part time basis. I really enjoyed meeting with her, sharing our experiences with Frontier and our ideas on public policy.

On Sunday, David and I drove to Banff, which is a small ski town in the Rocky Mountains. It was fantastic to see hills after living so long in the Canadian prairies, which are predominantly flat without much vegetation. Seeing the Rocky Mountains and Calgary was a real highlight of this trip, especially since we managed to see some Moose, Deer and a White Fox along the way!

This week at Frontier I have been working on a shorter policy paper concerning the state of property rights enjoyed by landowners in Alberta. The Provincial Government has enacted several pieces of legislation which the Wild Rose Caucus, which is one of the minor parties within the Alberta Legislature, claims greatly diminish the rights of landowners, and gives arbitrary power to the Provincial Government. My task is to examine the legislation and determine whether the claims made are verified. It is an exciting project, and ties in with the legal training I have received so far in my degree really well.

I have also begun collaborating with Ben, one of the policy analysts at Frontier, on a policy paper on Equalization and how to reform allocation formulas to minimise disparity in Canada. So far the project is in its preliminary stages, but promises to be a good paper that I will continue to work on after returning home.

This week marks the official end of my internship with the Frontier Centre. I cannot believe how quickly my time here has gone; it feels like yesterday that I arrived in Winnipeg! On Wednesday I will be travelling to Washington D.C. to attend the International Students for Liberty Conference on behalf of the Mannkal Foundation, which I’m really excited about! From there I will write my final blog entry, and will then head onto New York City before returning home to Perth.

Today is a busy day for Frontier’s Regina offices. As I write this, I am watching the Superbowl XLV pre-show on TV. The game is almost as big in Canada as it is for the United States and all the supermarkets here are full with shoppers buying last minute items for their Superbowl parties!

Today is also Waitangi day, which is New Zealand’s national holiday. To celebrate, we are throwing our own Waitangi Day dinner at the house with a couple of ex-pats that David knows, which should be heaps of fun.

Over the weekend I explored more of Regina. Yesterday David took me to Victoria Park, which is a small park in the centre of the city, and then onto the Cornwall Centre, which is the main shopping mall. This morning I took a tour inside the Saskatchewan Legislature building, which was incredible. It is the largest provincial Legislature building in Canada, and took four years to build.

Felicity at the Cenotaph (War Monument) in Victoria Park

Saskatchewan Legislature Building

Inside the Legislative Assembly

At the beginning of this week I submitted my first policy paper for review. While waiting to receive notes from Marco, Frontier’s Director of Research and Ben, one of Frontier’s Policy Analysts who specialises in Equalization, I spent the week working on a shorter piece on taxi regulation in Western Australia. The piece advocates deregulation of the system to remove barriers to entry, comparing the quality of services experienced in Perth, which has a controlled system, to cities in New Zealand, where there are no restrictions for entry and the standard of service experienced is higher.

I finished the Taxi piece at the end of this week (click here to read it) , and will now move on to amending my policy paper as per Ben and Marco’s notes, as well as working on a short piece on property rights in Alberta, to determine whether an individuals right to retain their property is adequately protected by Legislation.

I will be travelling to Calgary at the end of this week to meet with Marco and see some of the city. Calgary is in the province of Alberta, which is currently experiencing an economic resources boom, so it will be interesting to visit and draw comparisons to Western Australia.

This week marks the halfway point of my trip, and two-thirds of the way through my internship with the Frontier Centre. It has been a largely uneventful week for me, and I spent the week working to finish my first Policy Paper and settling into life in Regina.

There was a bit of a heatwave on Wednesday and Thursday, and temperatures reached about 2°C, which is the warmest weather I have experienced since arriving in Canada. While the colder weather is not that bothersome for me, it was nice to get a little bit of a reprieve, which unfortunately did not last long. It was frosty over the weekend, reaching temperatures of -22°C. Because the wind chill has such a strong effect on temperatures in Saskatchewan, the weather is reported both as the actual temperature and as a ‘feels like’ temperature. Over the weekend, whilst the actual temperature was -22°C, the ‘feels like’ temperature was up to -34°C, which was very chilly indeed!!

Albert Street Bridge in Regina

While my week was uneventful, David, the senior policy analyst at the Frontier offices in Regina, was very busy. The Frontier Centre handles the annual release of the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey in Canada, and David spent the week conducting radio and television interviews about the survey and its findings on Canadian housing affordability. I was able to go with him to the filming of one television interview, which I found fascinating to watch. The index also surveys housing affordability in Australian cities, and concludes that Sydney is the most unaffordable city within Australia, with Melbourne and Perth close behind. Australia as a market is exceedingly unaffordable when compared with cities in Canada and the United States, thus making Sydney housing one of the most unaffordable markets worldwide.

This week at Frontier I have been composing and putting the final touches on my Policy Paper on Equalization. I finished formatting and referencing the paper over the weekend, and will submit the first draft tomorrow morning. I have really enjoyed working on the paper, particularly when researching and discussing the reform strategies that can be implemented to assist have-not Canadian Provinces to achieve greater fiscal independence away from the Equalization program.

This week I will source a new topic and begin research on my next project with the Frontier Centre. I’m also hoping to take a tour inside the Saskatchewan Legislature Building (pictured below), sometime this weekend, which is only a 5 minute walk from where I’m living in Regina. The exterior of the building looks very similar the Manitoban legislature, except it is currently surrounded by a frozen moat!

Saskatchewan Legislature Building

This week I have moved from the Winnipeg office, to Frontier’s offices in Regina, Saskatchewan. We made the 6 and a half hour drive on Tuesday. Driving in the Canadian prairies is similar to driving up north in Western Australia; except instead of desert, the Prairie Provinces are covered in snow! While in Regina I am staying with David, a policy analyst for Frontier, and living in the office building in a suite downstairs.

Frontier Centre Sign - Saskatchewan Office

On Wednesday, Frontier held a lunch event at the Hotel Saskatchewan, which is a beautiful old hotel in Regina. The event featured a speech by Calvin Helin, a prominent indigenous lawyer and author, who spoke about the negative effects that welfare has on the indigenous community and the lack of incentives given to move off welfare and achieve economic independence. He likened this to the equalization system in Canada, whereby governments with below-average fiscal capacities are given funding unconditionally by the federal government. The equalization receiving provinces therefore have little incentive to implement sound economic policies that promote growth, as they are more heavily compensated when they underperform. As Equalization and its effects on growth is the topic for my first policy paper with Frontier, I found Calvin’s presentation to be fascinating and extremely useful for my paper.

On Friday, David and I drove out to Moosejaw, to meet with a supporter of Frontier. Moose Jaw is located 45 minutes away from Regina, and has a population of about 40,000. Moose Jaw as a city has not grown significantly since the 1930’s, and almost all buildings have been maintained to look as they did during that period. The city was really interesting to see, and walking around Moose Jaw feels like living in a small town in the 1930’s, which was really interesting.

Frontier Offices in Regina

I have begun writing my first policy paper on equalization, and I’m about a third to halfway through writing. I hope to be finished with the first draft later next week, and will then move onto my next project with Frontier.