Economy
Know
Thy Neighbor: What Canada Can Tell the U.S. About Financial
Regulation
In
designing a new regulatory architecture for the financial system of the U.S.,
American policy-makers might consider taking a page or two from Canada, says
Pietro Nivola of the Brookings
Institution and John Courtney of the University of Saskatchewan.
Nivola and Courtney point out some of the reasons why the Canadian banking
system has long been regarded by the IMF as a paragon of international best
practices. Read
Canada’s Recession in Historical
Perspective
A new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
examines the past 13 economic downturns since 1926 and reaches two conclusions:
no other recession since the Great Depression has come on this strong and
Canadians face greater vulnerability than at any time since the 1940’s because
of low savings, high household debt, and a weakened social safety net.
Read
Reasons for
Optimism
March 2009 unemployment data from Statistics Canada rated the Kitchener
Metropolitan Area, as having the second highest unemployment rate among
Canada's 27 urban centres. Yet, despite
the large percentage of job losses in the Ontario economy, there are several reasons
to remain optimistic, writes Daniel Schwanen of the Centre for International Governance
Innovation. Read
Canada’s 2009 Fiscal Accountability
Rankings
With total spending by Canada’s
federal, provincial and territorial governments over the past decade tallying
$66.8 billion, upcoming deficits are far larger than they would have been had
governments stuck to their budget promises, according to a recent study by the
C.D. Howe Institute. In the study,
authors William Robson and Colin Busby rank governments on how well their
spending promises at budget time predicted actual spending by the end of each
fiscal year. Read
The Food
Crisis
In the throes of the financial
meltdown it’s easy to forget that we were in the midst of another serious crisis
before the meltdown, writes Jennifer Clapp of the Centre for International Governance
Innovation. The global food crisis is far from over and still lurks in the
background, she warns. Clapp explains how the global economic crisis is setting
the stage for even greater food insecurity, especially in the world's poorest
countries. What is needed, she writes, is nothing short of a global agricultural
new deal, which should include an increase in amount and flexibility of
international food aid, and more balanced international trade rules. Read
Canadian Consumer Tax Index
2009
A new study released by the Fraser Institute shows that even though
the income of the average Canadian family has increased significantly since
1961, their total tax bill has increased at a much higher rate. The index adds
up various taxes at the federal, provincial, and local level, including both
direct and indirect taxes. Read
International
Affairs
Recession Hits Chinese
Overseas Investment Plans
The
recession is affecting the overseas investment plans of Chinese companies,
according to an Asia Pacific
Foundation Canada survey of more than 1,100 companies in China. Some 40%
reported they have cut back their planned investment offshore because of the
slump. Read
European Union Lauded for its Vow to
Partner with Canada
Thomas d’Aquino, Chief Executive and
President of the Canadian
Council of Chief Executives, welcomed the European Union’s
recent decision to launch negotiations with
Canada aimed at establishing an ambitious
trans-Atlantic economic partnership. The negotiations, which are to be initiated
in Prague on May 6th by Canadian
and EU leaders, will deal with a comprehensive set of subjects including trade
in goods, technical barriers to trade, customs procedures, cross-border trade in
services, investment, government procurement, regulatory co-operation,
intellectual property, the movement of persons, dispute settlement and
sustainable development. Read
Domestic Labour Mobility
Domestic workers—housekeepers, elder
care and child caregivers—are one of the most marginalized groups in the global
labour market, writes guest editor for the Canadian Foundation for the Americas
(FOCAL), Barbara MacLaren. MacLaren explains that growth in the number of Latin
American women seeking work abroad has introduced new legal challenges for
migrant workers and non-citizens. This month’s FOCALPoint addresses emerging trends
affecting migrant women in the domestic sector, and offers several policy
recommendations for receiving countries such as
Canada. Read
Domestic
Politics
Should Canadians Switch to a System
of Proportional Representation?
Western
Canada’s
post-secondary students say that it’s time for Canadians to change the way we
elect our leaders.
The 2008 Canada West Foundation Student Essay
Contest asked whether Canadians should switch to a system of proportional
representation. University of British
Columbia student Brian Baker argues in the winning undergraduate essay that
the current electoral system impedes rather than supports the rich diversity of
Canada. Matthew Sharp of Simon Fraser University proposes in his
winning graduate essay that a hybrid of the two methods would allow for the
greater range of representation without completely changing our traditional
electoral system. Read
British
Columbia
Commentary
In advance of the May
12th referendum on the Single Transferable Vote (STV), a system of
proportional representation, the British Columbia Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
examines democratic reform and offers a simple primer on the STV process, with
both the yes and no sides represented. This special edition of B.C. Commentary also reviews the recent
B.C. Budget, and summarizes an extensive review of inequality trends in B.C.
going back three decades. Its key finding is that B.C. is becoming more unequal.
Read
Public
Policy
Community-Government
Collaboration on Policy
Developed by a group
of ten partners and released by the Caledon Institute for Social Policy,
this manual provides practical lessons for the establishment and operation of
effective government-community collaborations on policy. Though poverty
reduction was the lens through which collaboration on policy was viewed, the
lessons presented are applicable to any complex problem. The many
examples, tools and references provided in the manual are helpful both to those
new to policy work and to groups already engaged in collaborations on
policy.
Read in English
I
Lire en français
Energy
and Environment
Biofuels:
At What Cost?
Although recently embraced by
Canadian governments as a seemingly win-win opportunity, biofuels subsidies have
been found to have unintended negative effects that can undermine the
environmental, social, fiscal and even political goals that they are intended to
support. This study aims to reduce this complex debate to two simple questions:
how much money are Canadian federal and provincial governments spending to
support liquid biofuels—fuel-grade ethanol and biodiesel—and does it represent
good value-for-money to Canadian taxpayers? It is one of a series of reports
undertaken by the Global Subsidies Initiative of the International Institute for Sustainable
Development. Read
Science and
Technology
Leader au
pays en conception optique
La nouvelle
chaire de recherche industrielle à l’Ùniversité Laval va alimenter la
mise en œuvre des technologies photoniques dans des domaines aussi variés que
l’astronomie, la télédétection, la médecine, la sécurité ou les arts
visuels. Cette chaire permet à son
titulaire d’établir un laboratoire unique au pays et un des rares dans le monde
(France et États-Unis) à s’intéresser à cette discipline. La recherche en
conception optique a contribué à l’éclosion d’une toute nouvelle génération de
dispositifs d’imagerie, de microscopie et d’éclairage, notamment celui par
diodes électroluminescentes (DEL).
Lire
McGill and
Montreal Children’s Hospital’s Discovery of Cancer Spread Mechanism: Discovery
of the Year
Janusz Rak, a
professor in pediatric oncology at McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine
and a researcher at the Research Institute of the Montreal Children’s Hospital
of the MUHC, identified a fundamental mechanism by which tumour cells spread.
These findings could change our view on how cancerous tissues work and lead to
major clinical innovations. Read
Education
Stellar Rankings for the Osgoode
Hall Law Journal
With only a few weeks to go before
the release of the final issue in York
University’s Osgoode Hall Law
Journal's special 50th anniversary series, comes the news that
the journal has been ranked among the top five per cent of law journals in the
world. The survey, which examined 1,300 periodicals in an array of academic
disciplines including law, was conducted by the renowned Australian
Research Council in consultation with panels of leading
international experts and was designed to help evaluate research excellence. Read
