Canadian Public Administration-Administration Publique Du Canada最新文献

Recurring high-profile incidents of police misconduct in Canada have led to claims that Police Services Boards (PSBs) are often ineffective in carrying out their governance responsibilities and require significant reform. Incidents such as the Freedom Convoy occupation in Ottawa demonstrate the consequences that can arise when police oversight fails to meet expectations. Although concerns about police oversight are not new, PSBs continue to suffer from challenges related to their structure and composition. In this study, we use publicly available data to examine the PSB competencies to better understand if these boards are currently equipped to carry out their roles.

Why do young people choose to become political staffers in Canada? Political staffers play an influential but controversial role in Canadian policymaking. In this research note, we utilize a mixed-methods approach to examine a likely group of future political staffers: university students studying political science. Drawing on data from an original survey, we find strong evidence that the majority of young people who say they want to become political staffers in Canada are motivated by serving the public good, while those who say they do not want to work in politics tend to provide justifications rooted in self-interest.

Situating the City of Saskatoon in a tax competition with four nearby prairie cities—Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, and Winnipeg—this study assesses the efficacy of two major tax tools used by Canadian cities to attract business investments: reduction of non-residential property tax rates and targeted abatements. Descriptive analyses and stakeholder interviews suggest that the abatement program is symbolic but not a major influencer, while reducing non-residential property tax rate is more effective in enhancing investment competitiveness. The study also offers policy improvements. The findings offer insights for municipal governments seeking to prioritize cost-effective tax policies for promoting business investments.

The last major reorganization of the federal government was undertaken by Prime Minister Campbell in 1993. Today, there is a new set of considerations that a new government must bear in mind to deal with a very different and much more uncertain world. This article responds to three of the articles in the December 2024 special edition of this journal by identifying ten of these new vectors, grouped under four inter-related headings: 1) The global environment in which Canada finds itself; 2) Scientific and technological change; 3) Social and cultural change; and 4) Changes in the geopolitical environment. The article poses the question, what does the government need to be able to do, and how should it do it, to govern effectively today and tomorrow? Noting that intelligence and agility are two essential characteristics of effective government in the 21^st century, the article concludes with suggestions for changes to the organization of the federal government.

Privacy is seldom regarded as a public value or subjected to empirical analysis in public administration. This study parsed 35 empirical research studies on privacy—encompassing more than 47 000 respondents—which were retrieved from Canada's Public Opinion Research Archives between 2007 and 2024. These government-sponsored studies were analyzed by the types of encounters, theoretical relationships, and citizen public value assessment. For Canadians, privacy is especially salient for state-initiated exchanges with citizens. It is thought of as a context more than as a cause or an outcome. It qualifies as a value, in tension with others, rather than as consensus or a contested value.

In 2021, Nova Scotia was among the first Canadian provinces to sign onto the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement. Promising significant investments into reducing the costs of child care for Nova Scotian families, creating more child care spaces, and increasing wages for child care workers, the new agreement has been celebrated for its intent to improve the quality of and access to care. Yet, the policy faced pushback from for-profit child care owners in Nova Scotia, who expressed deep concerns about the impact of the policy on their centers. Recognizing this discord, this article explores how the transition to the new funding model has impacted for-profit care facilities in the province. Based on a series of interviews with for-profit owners/operators, this article examines the policy rollout and identifies three key areas of concern for for-profits regarding the transition to the CWELCCA: financial concerns; management concerns; and communication challenges with the provincial government. The findings suggest that for-profit owners in the province were particularly frustrated by a lack of consultation with stakeholders and a series of miscommunications throughout the process.

We explore the Office of the Auditor General (OAG)'s power and relationship with Parliament through the performance audit reports and evidence regarding two major COVID-19 benefit programs: the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS). We found that OAG would rather be seen as a “trusted partner” in governments' performance improvements, than only serving as a watchdog of the government. While the work between OAG and Parliament strengthens formal and political accountability in Canada's parliamentary system, this relationship is not free of tensions or issues.

Many governments worldwide, including contemporary provincial ones in Canada, provide political parties with direct public subsidies to fund their day-to-day operations and campaigns. While the literature considers the spread, scope, and motivations for party subventions, very little attention has been devoted to assessing its support among the public. We consider this question by examining evidence from the 2015 Canadian Election Study. Our findings reveal that the Canadian public generally opposed the now-defunct federal per-vote subsidy scheme. Simultaneously, we reveal that public trust, partisanship, individual donation habits, and egalitarian economic values are correlated with attitudes towards public funding.

Across Canada, tens of thousands of municipal politicians govern thousands of municipalities, making important policy decisions in domains ranging from policing to planning to environmental policy. Despite a recent flowering of research on municipal policy, administration, and politics, we still lack a great deal of basic information about municipal governance in Canada, including core municipal democratic institutions. In this research note, we provide a comprehensive overview of basic electoral institutions in every elected municipal government in Canada, including an estimated count of the number of municipal governments and elected municipal politicians in Canada, a description of the distribution of ward, at-large, and hybrid systems and district magnitudes, and an overview of municipal council sizes. We then describe how these institutional features vary by province, population size, and population density. We conclude by discussing the opportunities for new research in municipal politics, policy, and public administration that are revealed by our comprehensive survey.

The public service faces two macro conditions that should be considered when tackling administrative and structural reforms: one, a growing lack of citizen trust in government and two, a view that the public service is increasingly irrelevant. While an ambitious public service reform agenda would require political support, tie up resources and potentially exhaust the institution, the cost of doing nothing may be greater than the cost of taking action to address the growing sense that the public service is not needed. A Clerk of the Privy Council led “Big R” reform initiative focused on long-term, sustainable and appropriate-to-the-times administrative and structural change should be pursued in three areas: improving government efficiency and effectiveness, responding to changing political expectations, and rebuilding trust and relevance in the institution.