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The election of Donald Trump in 2015 was viewed by many as an aberration in American politics. Not so with his second coming, and the sweeping extent of his victory – the popular vote, the Electoral College, the Senate, the House and the support of Silicon Valley tech titans.
The Government of Canada recently identified a site in Ontario for the storage of spent nuclear fuel. The decision opens the door to Canada becoming fully engaged in the nuclear fuel cycle. To date, Canada’s role in nuclear power has been limited to the mining, manufacturing natural-uranium fuel bundles for CANDU reactors, and export of uranium as well as the commercial development and sale of nuclear reactors. There have been no legal impediments for Canada to engage in the full nuclear fuel cycle. Rather, the absence of clear policies on enrichment and reprocessing has impeded the domestic development of important related technologies.
There is a chasm of disagreement separating climate-concerned policy makers in Ottawa and supporters of the oil and gas sector on the prairies. Each side behaves like they’re playing a zero-sum game.
One of the most challenging and divisive public policy issues in Canada is the federal government's Equalization program. It seeks to ensure provinces have the fiscal capacity to deliver programs to their citizens on a roughly comparable basis. The formula to determine what provinces qualify to receive federal Equalization payments is by its nature a source of controversy. Recently Newfoundland and Labrador launched the latest court challenge to Equalization. In this Policy Paper for the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy (JSGS), Louis Levesque, considered one of Canada's leading experts on Equalization, does a deep dive into the economic and regional considerations that lie at the heart of the issue.
Our policies both foreign and domestic are indeed taking place in turbulent times. If there ever really was, there is certainly no real divide now possible between the policies that happen at home, and those that take place beyond our borders.
In August 2023, the Saskatchewan government enacted a policy pursuant to the Education Act. Titled "Use of Preferred First Name and Pronouns by Students," the policy requires schools to obtain parental consent for students under 16 before using their chosen name, gender identity, or gender expression.
There is no escaping today’s reality: more and more the challenges of democracy are in the headlines. It is evident around the world, whether in the presidential campaign unfolding in the U.S., in the unrest evidenced in the wake of Venezuela’s recent election, or in the rise of populist authoritarian figures across Europe, and elsewhere. Long considered the bedrock of western society, democracy itself is now often being questioned.
In 1996, Harvard University professor Robert Putnam gave the annual Manion Lecture in Ottawa, sponsored by the Canadian Centre for Management Development. The title of his address was The Decline of Civil Society: How Come? So What? It was four years before the release of Putnam’s book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, a seminal work that to this day remains a defining and insightful analysis on the decline of civil society in the United States.
Reaching the global target of net zero GHG emissions by 2050 represents one of the biggest public policy challenges ever undertaken. The magnitude of the task, which amounts to retooling the global economy in the next 25 years, cannot be overstated. Nor can the importance of achieving the goal to avoid what can be catastrophic climate consequences for future generations. This Policy Brief uses the perspectives of experts to detail the specifics of the challenge we face.
During the past few years, it has become clear that Canada's healthcare system is facing a human resource and subsequently, a health services crisis. As a result, we are witnessing a growth in health inequities due to an increasing disparity in access to health services.
Everywhere you look in Canada the health care system seems overwhelmed and barely able to cope with demand. We’ve all either heard the grim litany, witnessed it, or experienced it personally: excessive and often punishing wait times, shortage of skilled professions, burnout of health care professionals and support staff, inexorably rising costs that are putting pressure on government budgets.
Canada faces significant challenges including weak per capita income growth, soaring government spending, and strained international relations, leading to diminishing public trust. There is an urgent need for a more efficient and accountable government to address these issues and navigate the complexities of the modern world.
The intricate interplay between urban design, health, and equity has emerged as a critical focal point in pursuit of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11, which seeks to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.
A new strain of economic nationalism is reshaping policies in the world’s two largest economies – the U.S. and China – and risks infecting the rest of us. This bout of nationalism coincides with profound structural changes in the global economy, a looming energy transition and intense strategic competition between America and China, making its future path highly uncertain and extremely difficult to navigate. It is an emerging risk to the global economy and Canada is not immune.
Saskatchewan has a significant endowment of critical minerals and Rare Earth Elements. With the right policies the province can become a major player in the supply chain for development of low-carbon, clean, and renewable energy technologies needed to address climate change.
The price of potash doubled in 2022, adding $10 billion to the value of Saskatchewan's pink gold. But the provincial government collected only a quarter of this windfall. This policy paper highlights the need to improve royalties and taxes to ensure a fair return for the people of Saskatchewan.
Nationalism is a powerful political force in countries as different as Canada, Belgium, Spain and the UK. In federal states, nationalist movements typically work to augment the autonomy of their community, often with some degree of success.
The health of the Saskatchewan economy is an issue of active debate, usually leading to a discussion on how to improve the province’s economic growth and employment performance. There is often little or no agreement on either topic. The slowdown in Saskatchewan’s economic growth over the past decade demands that a more informed and inclusive discussion occurs.
As the spectre of a climate crisis casts an increasingly worrisome global shadow, Canada has started to take action, setting a goal to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To reach this target, the government is charting its course through the adoption of clean energy.
We might wonder if the economic trajectories of nations are determined by “laws of growth”, much as the law of gravity determines the trajectories of stars and planets. Clearly there are no laws of economic growth that approach the precision, universality, and permanence of the laws of physics. But if we stand back and observe the economic growth paths of nations from a sufficiently long-term, global perspective, certain significant regularities emerge. The purpose of this essay is to elaborate this claim as well as some of its implications for Canada’s economic performance looking forward.
Public administration organizes policy areas into separate departments or silos for the sake of order and efficiency, resulting in ‘departmentalism’, ‘tunnel vision’, and ‘single purpose organizations’. To meet the diverse needs of vulnerable children and youth, collaboration across various service delivery organizations is vital. Understanding how these collaborations are formed/structured, governed, and evolved is crucial for the effective collaborative efforts in the future.
The sixtieth anniversary of Medicare (Boan 2006) came and went last year with almost no fanfare. The lack of celebration is not difficult to understand. While surveys indicate Canadians value their public health care system, it is also clear the system is struggling, and many are skeptical that recent funding agreements between the federal government and the provinces hold out much hope for radical improvement.
People who are trans and gender diverse (PTGD) are a medically underserved population in Saskatchewan. An overburdened healthcare system has struggled to provide access to care of any kind for PTGD, let alone care that is inclusive and non-judgmental. There are also social and legal barriers—strictures within the healthcare system itself—that further impede access to care.
In all communities, whether defined by race, ethnicity, or class, an important dimension in explaining social pathologies, such as homicide and suicide, is low employment.
