Is Highway 413 the Solution to Traffic Congestion?

By: Ifrah Ikram Premier Doug Ford’s government proposed a new highway which would connect Highway 400 in Vaughan to the intersection of Highways 407 and 401 between Mississauga and Brampton. The proposed Highway 413 will stretch 59 kilometres and four to six lanes wide, serving the regions of York, Peel, and Halton. This route will…

Addressing Toronto’s loss of dwelling rooms in rooming houses

By: Ruolan Ma As the epicentre of Ontario’s housing crisis, Toronto has a rental market with an extremely limited housing stock and one of the lowest vacancy rates in Canada at 0.5%. As a result, rental prices remain high with the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto reaching 2,250 in 2022, a 22%…

Pan-Canadian Perspectives: The Cost of Electricity in Ontario

Editor’s Note: This week, the PPGR is publishing commentary articles from public policy and public administration students at universities across Canada. This Pan-Canadian Perspectives series is meant to highlight voices from coast to coast, addressing diverse issues of local and national importance. Our fifth article in this series is from Sarah Edmunds at Ryerson University,…

Pan-Canadian Perspectives: The TransMountain Pipeline and the National Interest

Editor’s Note: This week, the PPGR is publishing commentary articles from public policy and public administration students at universities across Canada. This Pan-Canadian Perspectives series is meant to highlight voices from coast to coast, addressing diverse issues of local and national importance. The first article in this series is a perspective from the East Coast:…

Three Major Problems with Hydro Solved by Shifting Costs from Bills to Taxes

Marvin JS Ferrer Electricity bills were expected to play a big role in the upcoming Ontario provincial election in 2018. However, the Ontario government implemented a plan to temporarily absorb some costs and lower bills by 25%. The opposition Progressive Conservatives also propose going further to lower bills a further 12.5 percentage points. Generating, transmitting,…

A Radioactive Policy: What to Do with High-level Nuclear Waste

Ian T. D. Thomson The world of nuclear energy generation presents an interesting paradox. With the USSR connecting the first nuclear power plant to the electricity grid in 1954, many applaud nuclear for being a clean, cheap, abundant and non-C02 emitting source of energy generation. Yet there remains a fear of nuclear meltdowns and of…