Search

Canada has just enacted legislation to give the broadcast regulator, the Canadian Radiotelevision and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), authority to regulate online streaming platforms, both domestic and international. This legislation, known as Bill C-11 as it passed through an extensive parliamentary review process, was highly controversial. The bill empowers the CRTC to review and possibly amend the definition of “Canadian content.” It will also require that streaming services contribute financially to the production of Canadian content and will impose “discoverability” requirements on digital streaming platforms (like YouTube, Spotify, Netflix and others) to ensure that Canadian content is promoted. The CRTC will have broad leeway to issue and enforce regulations to achieve these ends. The U.S. high-tech and streaming industry does not like this legislation and has used various tactics to oppose it. Among these are arguments that C-11 violates commitments that Canada made to the United States in the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), the replacement for NAFTA, and that implementation of C-11 will result in U.S. trade retaliation. This paper analyzes the arguments to this effect put forth by the U.S. tech industry’s trade association, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), and refutes them, particularly the argument that Canada will need to invoke CUSMA Article 32.6 (the cultural exception clause) to justify its actions. At the same time, the paper cautions that the CRTC needs to be careful with respect to imposing a requirement on foreign streamers to contribute to Canadian production if at the same time it denies them the ability to acquire and exploit the production they have helped finance when no such limitation is imposed on equivalent Canadian streaming services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses “Regulatory Alignment for Multi-Modal Infrastructure Corridors” in the context of the Canadian Northern Corridor Concept (CNC). In particular, the paper reviews whether there are any existing models “for regulatory oversight and approval for multi-modal corridors and the subsequent placement of infrastructure within” that might be appropriate in developing the CNC. The paper concludes that existing models do not include certain of the elements of the CNC Concept as it has evolved to date, nor could any of the models be applied within the framework of Canada’s jurisdictional realities that would govern the CNC. The paper identifies several questions that need to be addressed in order to advance the CNC Concept to a more fully-formed proposal, which would form the basis for further examination of the need for regulatory oversight and approval and the form that such oversight and approval might take. The paper also suggests a forum that might oversee this further work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore how the power wielded by regional incumbents has impacted subnational innovation agendas. Our findings suggest that the design of mission-oriented innovation policies should be more attentive to regional innovation policies and their relationship to how innovation may serve to bolster incumbents and not undermine them. We use a case-study of innovation in fossil fuels. Recently, innovation policy literature has explored innovation policy and global climate as a major topic. On the one hand, carbon lock-in has been used to explain why there has been such difficulty in reducing carbon emissions, in many cases, despite an increasing emphasis of mission-innovation policies. On the other hand, mission-innovation policies are believed to be a key to the development of disruptive innovations that could break this carbon intensive path dependency. Although the two literatures explore the same problem, there could be more integration. While carbon lock-in is being considered in the mission-innovation literature, it nevertheless has been largely overlooked at the mission-setting stage. On the other hand, the lock-in literature has tended to overlook the findings of mission-oriented innovation literature in offering solutions, which suggests that there is a more productive role for mission-oriented innovations in breaking free of previous constraints to serve in the low-carbon energy transition. To make our case, we argue it is important to distinguish among the various impacts disruptive innovations have on the market shares of incumbents'. We propose the following three schema: new market, market rewarding and market destroying. By variegating the potential impact of innovations, we suggest that mission-oriented innovation polices may be designed to only support certain types of innovations that do not directly undermine the market share of incumbents. Using a detailed case study of the Province of Alberta, Canada, we then explore the role of the province's mission-oriented policy in the development of technology to produce the Canadian oil sands. The case study illustrates how incumbents influenced the establishment and direction of the mission's goal. Shifts in incumbency opposition toward the province's mission-oriented innovation policy coincided with the changing impact of the innovation from being market destroying to market rewarding. We suggest that future research should be more attentive to the role of incumbents in influencing mission-oriented innovation policy and the importance of their influence at the mission-setting stage. Furthermore, we suggest that to meet the grand challenge of addressing climate change through mission-oriented innovation policies, these policies must be designed to break free of these institutional constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the transition from the "era of the health accords" (from 2000 to 2017) to the new regime of individual bilateral agreements between Ottawa and each of the provinces and territories, allocating federal health transfers and setting agreed-upon health-reform priorities in each jurisdiction. The paper argues that the health accords of 2000, 2003 and 2004 were essentially unsuccessful for a number of reasons. First, they tended to raise expectations among the public, health system actors and health policy experts about the ability to transform health care in Canada in a relatively short period of time. This was, in part, a result of the accords' very broad and general commitments to change, but also their lack of recognition of the barriers to change that exist within the system. Second, and related to the first, attention was paid mostly to the amount of the transfer from the federal government to the provinces and territories, rather than to how those dollars were to be spent. At best, governments bought only a modest amount of change in the system, despite the billions of dollars of new investment. Unlike other industrialized federations, Canada appears to be the only one that relies on an ongoing, highly politicized process of intergovernmental diplomacy to negotiate the fiscal relationship in health care. This, combined with a somewhat amorphous and changeable understanding of the federal government's overall role in health care, complicates the process of reform and heightens the political stakes around the negotiations. The new model of bilateral agreements negotiated under an umbrella statement of common principles around health-reform priorities may yet prove to be an improvement in both process and outcomes. Bilateralism can serve to de-escalate the political stakes inherent in the federal-provincial diplomacy around Canada's most popular social program, by moving away from the "grand bargains" that characterized the accords. In short, there will be less opportunity for the kind of political rhetoric that unduly raises expectations of rapid change. More importantly, the bilateral agreements, although far from perfect, may actually better serve to focus attention on the specific health-service organization and delivery issues the provinces and territories intend to improve, restructure or expand. Under very broad principles such as "improving access to mental health and community care," the bilateral agreements articulate some very clear plans about specific approaches, programs and policies on which the transfers will be spent. This should provide a much greater opportunity for the Canadian public to hold governments to account for progress in those areas, something the accords never really managed to do. Going forward, there is still room for improvement. Some provincial plans are decidedly vague, and governments should be urged to be more specific in their commitments and intentions. Common indicators continue to be difficult to develop, although big strides have been made in recent decades. Governments would be well advised to talk seriously and openly about the challenges and barriers to change that exist within the system and, in doing so, marshal public support to dismantle them. And the federal government itself needs to actively engage in assisting jurisdictions in learning from and adapting the successful reforms and initiatives of other jurisdictions. This could be an act of true system stewardship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada is well known as an export-based economy, particularly with respect to its agricultural and agri-food industries. Since the signing of the Canada-U.S. Trade Agreement (CUSTA) in 1989, the federal government has negotiated trade agreements with more than 40 international partners, providing Canadian firms with access to a multitude of foreign markets while also giving consumers at home a greater set of choices in the market for a great number of goods and services. Progress on more liberalized internal trade within the federation has not, however, kept pace with accomplishments on the international trade front. Despite the implementation of the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT) in 1995 and the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) in 2017 (along with several smaller but significant interprovincial agreements), a number of significant barriers remain to internal trade in goods and services in Canada. The focus of this paper is upon barriers that prevent the movement of goods and services among provinces, referred to as interprovincial trade barriers. There are a number of different types of these barriers; one such type is tariffs (which function similar to a sales tax) upon goods and services themselves. While tariffs are a major topic of study in international trade, they do not form a focus of this paper, which will instead focus on non-tariff barriers or NTBs. One such category of barriers to internal trade includes natural barriers such as lakes, rivers, mountain ranges and the simple distance between potential trading partners. A second type is called prohibitive barriers, which make illegal the movement of certain types of goods or services among provinces; perhaps the most wellknown of these pertains to the prohibition of the movement of alcohol or tobacco between provinces. Technical and regulatory/administrative barriers also exist, and pertain to provincial differences in requirements within specific sectors, licensing requirements, etc. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) has noted that differences in trucking regulations as well as inconsistent regulation of provincially and federally inspected meat-processing facilities are of particular concern in the agricultural and agri-food industries (CFA 2021). These barriers are costly to the Canadian economy, limiting its growth, output, efficiency and productivity. Estimates by Alvarez et al. (2019) suggest that Canadian GDP would increase by between one and four per cent if trade in goods alone were completely liberalized. This is approximately $92 billion per year, an amount that, if realized, could lead to significant job creation, increased streams of taxation revenue for government, enhanced economic growth and improved productivity. Economists have long cited the efficient and welfare-maximizing outcomes associated with unfettered markets, and removal of interprovincial trade barriers would provide significant gains for the Canadian economy. Several important drivers have led to the current situation where barriers to interprovincial trade constrict the freer flow of goods and services in Canada. One of them is federalism itself, where the duty of provincial governments is to act in the best interest of constituents, even if it means overall gains to Canada as a whole are not being realized. Related to this is a second driver, which is the balancing act that courts must strike in Canada when interpreting both federal and provincial legislation in areas where both levels of government can be argued to have jurisdiction. A third driver is the potential for stakeholders to act to prevent liberalization of trade if it is in their best interest to do so. Regulators and gatekeepers, industry associations and even governments can have vested financial or personal interest in the status quo, and be hesitant to change it even if they recognize that change would have the potential to provide greater economic benefits to others. A final driver that has led to the current system is the sheer amount of time, effort and expertise that would be required to update the current system. There are at least three plausible options for reducing interprovincial barriers to trade in Canada. The first would be to encourage courts to interpret relevant legislation in a way that would aid the freer flow of products and services internally. For example, section 121 of the Constitution Act seems to clearly require the free movement of goods among provinces, but the Supreme Court of Canada has, out of respect for provinces' rights, deferred to the notion of federalism and consistently interpreted legislation in a way that permits provinces to put limits on trade. Should the Court interpret 121 in a more constructionist way, interprovincial trade would increase. A second option is for provinces to independently negotiate more open markets in Canada. The New West Partnership Trade Agreement (NWPTA) among the four Western provinces has been successful, as have other regional agreements, at opening markets and generating economic benefits. A third option is to use the CFTA's mechanisms and resources at the federal and provincial levels to remove barriers on an industry-by-industry basis. Given the sheer number of firms and industries, it is more cumbersome to negotiate large-scale, national or multi-provincial agreements than smaller scale, industry-specific ones. There are costs and benefits associated with each of these options. Requiring courts to revise how they interpret law is beyond the power of the federal and provincial governments. Striking new trade partnerships is a time-consuming process, with no assurance of success. Negotiating improvements in specific subsectors and industries is achievable, but provides only incremental gains. From a benefits perspective, there is much to be gained: the estimated economic benefits from the freer flow of goods and services are considerable, although it is likely that those with a vested interest will see some of their current benefits transferred to others as a result of removing trade barriers. Overall, it seems obvious that previous work to liberalize trade has been fruitful, and a combination of the options proposed is likely to be worth the effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many countries reacted by relaxing environmental rules and Canada was no exception. Environmental regulators across Canada changed rules in unprecedented efforts to balance public health, economic wellbeing and protection of the environment. This briefing paper takes stock of and discusses these actions. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many countries reacted by relaxing environmental rules and Canada was no exception. Environmental regulators across Canada changed rules in unprecedented efforts to balance public health, economic wellbeing and protection of the environment. This briefing paper takes stock of and discusses these actions. Only 41 of the 61 government notices included a specific COVID-related rationale for the rule changes and the explanations lacked detail. Reasons included accommodating regulated entities' need to observe public health requirements (88), financial relief for industry (38), responding to government capacity constraints (14) and accommodating public observance of health restrictions (3). More than a third of the changes were indefinite, with no set end date. In these cases especially it is critical that government agencies be held accountable for reinstating lost protections in a timely manner. Overall, environmental regulators across Canada responded in similar ways to the pandemic. Some agencies, however, took extraordinary actions. Alberta, for example, was the only jurisdiction to completely suspend reporting requirements and did so across multiple sectors. In Ontario, the provincial government indefinitely suspended parts of the province's Environmental Bill of Rights, allowing other regulations to be approved with reduced oversight and public consultation. Newfoundland and Labrador was alone in permanently amending environmental assessment timelines. British Columbia, on the other hand, was the sole jurisdiction to change a rule to address constraints faced by the public, suspending public appeal filing deadlines to support public participation in project decisions. As the virus is brought under control, government should move swiftly to restore suspended environmental protections. Agencies must now be held to account for ensuring, at minimum, a timely return to the status quo. Where regulators are practicing enforcement discretion, fair and transparent enforcement decision-making is critical. Further, agencies have the opportunity to learn and adapt as a result of this experience, leading to smarter, more resilient environmental regulation in Canada. An important question warranting further inquiry, especially, is whether regulator actions were justifiable, ex post. What were the environmental, social and economic costs and benefits of these rule changes? The comprehensive database of rule changes presented in this paper could aid such future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceived constraints on getting Canadian commodities to global markets have generated renewed interest in a cross-country infrastructure corridor, a concept that was initially conceived several decades ago. Consideration of the corridor concept exists in a broader context of fast-evolving jurisprudence in relation to the rights of Indigenous peoples in Canada. The Canadian legal landscape pertaining to those rights has evolved significantly in the years since the northern corridor concept was conceived, particularly with respect to Crown consultation obligations. Crown obligations in relation to the proposed corridor would be significant with respect to the rights and interests of Indigenous peoples. A cross-Canada corridor would, by its linear nature, directly and indirectly affect many diverse Indigenous communities that are situated in non-treaty, modern treaty and historical treaty contexts across the country. For example, the assessment and approval process for the Northern Gateway project involved more than 80 Indigenous communities and territories in Alberta and British Columbia, and the now-cancelled Energy East project would have crossed the traditional territory of 180 Indigenous communities on its route from Alberta to the Maritimes. Similarly, the review and approval process for the Trans Mountain Expansion project (TMX) involved at least 120 Indigenous communities along its route from the Edmonton area to Vancouver. In today's legal context, the Crown (i.e., federal or provincial governments, or both) must consult, and in some situations accommodate, Indigenous communities in situations where the Crown has actual or constructive knowledge of the existence or potential existence of Aboriginal rights or title and contemplates conduct that might adversely affect those rights or title, such as approval of major infrastructure projects. Pursuit of the corridor project, to the extent that it involves Crown action that may adversely affect established or asserted Aboriginal rights or title, would trigger the Crown's duty to consult, as would review and approval of specific infrastructure projects that may eventually fall within the corridor. The duty to consult doctrine emerged from the 2004 landmark cases of Haida and Taku, and courts have been engaged in an exercise of clarifying the nature and contours of the legal landscape in the years since. A primary focus of this research paper is on "meaningful consultation," a notion that is central in judicial decisions on the duty to consult in relation to major projects. Significant clarity now exists in the case law with respect to the duty to consult, including what constitutes meaningful consultation. As the Federal Court of Appeal recently stated in Coldwater First Nation v. Canada (Attorney General), the "case law is replete with indicia" of what constitutes meaningful consultation. In practical terms, meaningful consultation includes, for example, the Crown consulting in good faith, the existence of two-way dialogue, the opportunity to participate in the process and to make submissions, open-mindedness by the Crown about accommodation of Indigenous rights, demonstrable integration of Indigenous communities' concerns, substantive responses to information requests (including translation in some contexts), participation funding, and a view to accommodation of conflicting interests. However, as stated in Haida and the many duty to consult cases since, consultation obligations are highly context-dependent, driven by the nature of the proposed activity (e.g., a pipeline, a hydro dam, a road, regulatory or licensing regime changes, etc.), the potential impacts that such activities would have on a specific Indigenous community, and the nature of the asserted or existing rights of that Indigenous community. Thus, Crown consultation duties would vary widely along the corridor route. Consultation and accommodation that may satisfy the Crown's obligations in one context may not be sufficient elsewhere. For example, while consultation obligations in a modern treaty context would largely flow from relatively clear and explicit treaty provisions, such duties may be far less clear in a historical treaty or non-treaty context where the rights at issue may themselves be disputed or unclear. This diversity across Indigenous rights and interests would generate significant complexity in the pursuit of the corridor concept. This context-dependent nature of the duty to consult presents challenges for consultation in relation to the corridor because it is a relatively abstract undertaking. Even if eventually put forward as a concrete proposal, presumably premised as a legislated right-of-way that follows a specific route, it would be very difficult to anticipate all specific potential impacts and then have the Crown consult on all of them. Such difficulty would be exacerbated by the reality that the specific infrastructure projects to follow would be primarily private-sector driven, and it would be extremely difficult to predict which projects with which attributes privatesector actors will pursue. While it is conceivable that the corridor consultation process employs some kind of envelope approach and attempts to consult on the corridor's most likely uses (e.g., road, rail, pipeline, electrical transmission and communication networks), significant additional consultation would almost certainly be required as each specific project is proposed. Ultimately, however, under contemporary Canadian law and notwithstanding prevalent critiques from Indigenous communities, legal scholars and others, the duty to consult is primarily procedural in nature and provides legal authority for the Crown to proceed without the consent of Indigenous communities. So long as the duty to consult is satisfied, the Crown may proceed (though, as noted in this research paper, there are ensuing legal complexities to consider with respect to infringement of rights and associated justification by the Crown, which warrants further analysis in a subsequent study). Thus, there is a possible legal pathway to follow in pursuit of the corridor, but it is a complex one wherein the highly contextdependent Crown consultation obligations would have to be fulfilled with respect to the many diverse, affected Indigenous communities. In this context, Canadian history offers at least one model: the Berger Inquiry. The 1970s Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, typically referred to as the Berger Inquiry, was a broad-based assessment of proposed major pipeline projects to transport oil and gas from the western Arctic region to southern Canada. It employed many features that today's courts point to as necessary for achieving meaningful consultation, such as community hearings, opportunities to ask questions and provide evidence, and participation funding. The new federal Impact Assessment Act may also have significant roles to play. For example, the minister could designate the corridor as a physical activity and it would undergo a full assessment under the act. The Crown could rely on the significantly increased legal responsibilities and authorities set out in the act for consulting Indigenous communities and incorporating their knowledge and input. Also, the corridor could be the focus of a regional assessment under the new act, wherein the government studies an area of anticipated development to inform planning and management of cumulative effects and uses that study to inform subsequent project-specific impact assessments. Such regional assessments could serve as an opportunity to engage in consultation with affected and potentially affected Indigenous communities. Notwithstanding these potential legal forums and the current state of Canadian law that permits Crown action without Indigenous consent so long as the duty to consult is discharged, the jurisprudence continues to evolve in ways relevant to the corridor. Most notably, in 2016 the federal government announced Canada's "full support" of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), including the declaration's reference to the concept of "free, prior and informed consent" (FPIC). The government has also committed to legislating the implementation of UNDRIP, a step already taken by the government of British Columbia. What implementation of UNDRIP means in today's Canadian legal context is evolving. To date, however, the federal government has largely adopted the view that UNDRIP and the notion of FPIC require only a good-faith effort to obtain consent, and not actually obtain consent in every instance. This is consistent with contemporary duty to consult case law indicating that consent is not required and there is no duty to agree. However, it is certainly foreseeable that this area of the law will continue to change. While the law is increasingly clear with respect to Crown consultation and accommodation obligations, the context-dependent nature of the legal framework presents significant challenges for pursuit of the corridor project, given its linear and relatively abstract natures. Further, this area of the law is evolving, particularly as governments move toward implementing UNDRIP. This article succinctly presents the diverse contexts of Indigenous rights and interests present in Canada today, provides clarity with respect to the concept of "meaningful consultation" in contemporary Canadian jurisprudence, and relates this body of law to the corridor concept. Critiques, complexities and points for further research are noted throughout, including with respect to future legal developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With federal political parties increasingly interested in new options for dental services, it's worth exploring two policy solutions to expand dental care into the public realm. Denticare would be a universal dental program for all Canadian residents. Denticaid would be a public dental insurance program for all Canadian children and uninsured adults. This paper estimates the costs of each option through micro-costing, which identifies the likely resources patients would use in each program and sums each unit cost in a given year to generate the estimated annual clinical cost. With no dental record-level information available for academic research, these estimates rely on survey data on oral health collected from across Canada. In particular, this paper uses the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) and the Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS), both released by Statistics Canada. When neither survey contains the necessary data to inform assumptions and costing, data from similar high-income jurisdictions are used. Denticare's costs are estimated using four key variables: the expected number of Canadians using dental services in a given year, the expected number of visits per year, the probability of dental treatments used per visit and the expected price of dental treatments. The first variable is based on Statistics Canada's 2016 census data, multiplied by their 2019 overall provincial population estimates. The second relies mostly on the CCHS question "when was the last time you visited the dentist?" The third variable uses Australian data and the fourth integrates data from a variety of provincial dental fee guides. High, low and baseline cost scenarios are included, with each province and territory's clinical costs projected five years after implementation in all three scenarios. To project future changes in service costs, the rate of price increase is calculated from changes between the 2015 and 2019 suggested fee schedules. Methods for micro-costing the denticaid program are similar to the denticare model and the variables are mostly treated similarly. However, the population variable is manipulated to account only for individuals without private dental insurance. There are limitations to this approach. The CCHS is only a telephone survey and does not collect dental data from across every province. The lack of pan-Canadian service-level use data meant that data from an Australian survey was used in its place. This model could not account for the effects of income on the frequency with which any particular dental treatment category is accessed per visit. Australia also covers most dental treatments for children, so use of dental services could be higher than what could be expected in Canada. To obtain a more exact picture, provincial governments should try to collect service-level data on dental use and dental practice activity. However, this paper does provide Canadian policy-makers interested in exploring some sort of public dental care program with a rigorous estimation of the reimbursement of clinical costs for the options of both denticare and denticaid programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infrastructure corridors are among the most complicated transactions in Canada. Establishing a pre-determined corridor and completing linear infrastructure projects within it requires transactions related to property rights, infrastructure planning, design, construction, financing, operation and maintenance, securing public support or social licence, and because of the long overdue recognition of Indigenous rights and title, informed support from affected Indigenous communities. This paper uses a comparative systems analysis to identify specific transaction costs in four areas -- historic, infrastructure development process, fiscal and economic systems. We argue these transaction costs can be significantly reduced by systematically implementing Indigenous fiscal, infrastructure and lands jurisdictions because this will permanently ensure that Indigenous communities and people are able to receive similar fiscal and economic benefits generated from infrastructure corridor projects as those enjoyed by other Canadians and other governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is centred on the use of legislation as a tool of public action in health policy. We suggest that, as with the Canada Health Act (CHA) of 1984, this option should be considered to direct future reform efforts and pursue our collective aims of health and wellness. The CHA is the legislative expression of the federal government's exercise of its spending power, serving to consolidate key national agreements governing the circumstances under which the federal government contributes to the costs of medically necessary health services delivered by the provinces and territories. Two features of the CHA merit highlighting. The first is that its core provisions -- in particular, the five criteria often referred to as Canada's "national standards" for health care -- were not new or original to the CHA. The CHA was nonetheless an important step in the development of Canada's health system because it enshrined together, in one statute, longstanding commitments. A second feature of the CHA worth highlighting is that it does not stand alone. The CHA is one of 13 statutes across the country, including one in each province and territory, that serve together to establish the basic legal infrastructure of Canada's health insurance system. The CHA's powers to make regulations and issue policy interpretation letters offer important potential to achieve needed health system reforms without needing to "open" the act. Even where these powers are unrestricted by an express requirement for consultation with the provinces and territories, however, this would undoubtedly be required, given the fundamentally consensual nature of the CHA. Finally, the federal government's legislative options are not limited to the CHA. Jurisdiction over health and health care in Canada is shared between the federal and provincial and territorial governments. The various federal powers with health aspects allocated by the Constitution Act, 1867 are significant, including the residual "federal health power" to make laws "for the peace, order and good government of Canada" It therefore makes good sense to consider federal policy objectives in the health domain with regard for the full spectrum of federal legislative competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada has not been left untouched by a new authoritarian, or ordered, populism that has seen the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president and the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union. Based on measurements of public opinion and other means developed to assess the phenomenon, this paper finds that populism in Canada is a significant political force, replacing the traditional left-right political spectrum. Not only has northern populism created a heightened partisan polarization in Canada, but it also proved to be a strong predictor of the outcome of the 2019 federal election. The authors' research shows that 34 per cent of Canadians maintain a populist outlook. Older, less-educated, working-class Canadians are the most likely to sympathize with ordered populism, and it is more prevalent in Alberta and Saskatchewan. It is also more closely aligned with Canadians whose political sympathies lie with conservative political parties. A number of factors have contributed to the rise of ordered populism. These include economic stagnation, the growing disparity between the wealthy and the middle and working classes, a sense that society is headed in the wrong direction and a backlash against the loss of traditional core values. Ordered populism rests on the belief in a corrupt elite, and the idea that power needs to be wrested from this elite and returned to the people. Oriented toward authoritarianism, ordered populism emphasizes obedience, hostility toward outgroups, a desire to turn back the clock to a time of greater order in society, and a search for a strongman type to lead the return to a better time. Nothing about ordered populism serves the public interest. Instead, its anti-democratic nature makes it incapable of solving the problems that spawned its rise in the first place. Ordered populism is xenophobic, mistrustful of science and journalism, and unsympathetic to equality and gender issues. Arising out of fear and anger, ordered populism is ultimately unhealthy for Western democracies and their societies and economies. Canada has yet to accord the rise of ordered populism the attention it deserves, although this paper explains why it is a critical force in this country that needs to be addressed. Currently, attitudes toward ordered populism are generally limited to sneering, derisiveness and denial, all of which do nothing to address the problem. Solving it requires understanding its roots. And if its origins lie in the collapse of the middle-class dream, then policy-makers will need to focus on creating a new economics of hope. Ordered populism is at the heart of stark divisions in Canada, and the 2019 federal election did little, if anything, to mend the rupture. Dissatisfaction with the election's results could forecast an even worse polarization in the near future, and increase the appeal of authoritarianism, if populism is left unaddressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the impact of the International Labour Organization's 1989 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (ILO C-169) since it entered into effect in 1991. It compares advances on Indigenous Peoples' rights in key Latin American states that have ratified the convention (Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru) with two which have not (Australia and Canada). It analyzes each country's constitutional order, legislative and jurisprudential developments, as well as policy developments concerning Indigenous Peoples and their rights. In particular, the paper examines the Indigenous right to political participation and autonomy or self-government, as well as the right to land, territories and natural resources in each context. It also assesses the right of Indigenous Peoples to prior consultation and to free, prior and informed consent, as well as to participating in the benefits provided by resource extraction on their lands and territories. While important gaps and substantial differences in the implementation and current status of these rights can be identified among the states analyzed, all of them have made progresses since ILO C-169 came into effect. While ILO C-169 has directly and deeply influenced relations between Indigenous Peoples and states in Latin American countries that have ratified it, it has also had an indirect but nevertheless decisive impact in Australia and Canada. This can be seen in legal developments, jurisprudence and policies that concern Indigenous Peoples in these two countries. In this sense, ILO C-169 cannot be understood in isolation. Rather, it is part of a broader international legal corpus that has emerged in recent decades, and which has strongly influenced legal and jurisprudential transformations concerning Indigenous peoples' rights in both signatory and non-signatory countries, including Australia and Canada. This legal corpus has expanded in recent years, especially through the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which Canada and Australia initially did not adopt, but later endorsed. In addition, the convention has not only influenced states, but also discourses and strategies of Indigenous Peoples and the business community in these two countries, which have in turn also shaped their legal and policy developments concerning Indigenous rights. ILO C-169 represents a key step in the recognition and protection of Indigenous Peoples' rights. Whether directly or indirectly, and notwithstanding the many gaps still left to address, its impact demonstrates that there is no going back on Indigenous Peoples' rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health workers are the foundation of health systems. The alignment of health workforce structures and processes to achieve the quadruple aim outcomes is central to any learning health system. This requires robust data and evidence. A key problem is that Canada lags behind comparable OECD countries in terms of health workforce data and digital analytics. As a result, health workforce planning and decision-making tend to be ad hoc, sporadic and siloed by profession or jurisdiction, generating significant costs, inefficiencies and risks for all involved. 2 Health workers in Canada account for more than 10 per cent of all employed Canadians and over two-thirds of all health-care spending, which amounted to $175 billion in 2019, or nearly eight per cent of Canada's total GDP. 3 Recognizing these facts and supporting strategic health workforce planning, policy and management ought to be key priorities for federal and provincial/ territorial governments and other health-care organizations. Across all the different stakeholders that make up the complex, adaptive health workforce system in Canada, we lack a centralized and co-ordinated data, analytics and strategic planning infrastructure, a neglect that has been readily acknowledged for over a decade. COVID-19 has exposed the significant gaps in our knowledge about the health workforce, causing critical risks for planners to manage during a health crisis. The time is ripe for the federal government to take on a co-ordinating leadership role to enhance the data infrastructure that provinces, territories, regions and training programs need to better plan for and support the health workforce. Efforts should centre on three key elements that will improve data infrastructure, bolster knowledge creation and inform decision-making activities: • A minimum data standard and enhanced health workforce data collection across all stakeholders; • More timely, accessible, interactive and fit-for-purpose decision-support tools; • Capacity building in health workforce data analytics, digital tool design, policy analysis and management science. This vision requires an enhanced federal government role to contribute resources to co-ordinate the collection of accurate, standardized and more complete data to support analysis across occupations, sectors and jurisdictions, with links to relevant patient information, health-care usage and outcome data, for more strategic fit-forpurpose planning at all levels. This paper presents a vision for enhanced federal support of data-driven and evidence-informed health workforce planning, policy and management. First, two data infrastructure and capacity-building recommendations include: 1. The federal government should create an initiative dedicated to enhancing standardized health workforce data, purpose-built for strategic planning and associated decision-making tools for targeted planning, through a specially earmarked contribution agreement with the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). 2. In addition to the need to build better data, digital tools and decision-support infrastructure, there is a parallel need to build the human resources capacity for health workforce analytics. Through a special Canadian Institutes of Health Research-administered fund, this could include a strategic training investment in health workforce research and a complementary signature initiative to fund integrated research projects that cut across the existing scientific institutes. Building on these two necessary but insufficient building blocks, a co-ordinating national health workforce organization could include one of the following three options: 1. The federal government could create a dedicated agency with a mandate to enhance existing data infrastructure and decision-support tools for strategic planning, policy and management across Canada. 2. Through a contribution agreement, the federal government could support the creation of an arm's-length, not-for-profit organization -- a partnership for health workforce -- as a steward of a renewed strategy and to provide health labour market information, training and management of human resources in the health sector, including support for recruitment and retention. 3. The federal government could support the creation of a robust, transparent and accessible secretariat for a council on health workforce to improve data and decision-making infrastructures, and to bolster knowledge creation through dedicated funding to inform policy and decision-making and collaborate on topics of mutual interest across stakeholders. In addition to building a more robust health system for Canada's post-pandemic recovery, these actions would align with the World Health Organization's Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health (2016) which encourages all countries to have institutional mechanisms in place by 2030 to effectively steer and co-ordinate an intersectoral health workforce agenda and established mechanisms for health workforce data sharing through national health workforce accounts. Because of the importance of the health workforce to Canada's economy and pandemic recovery, building the necessary infrastructure requires a sizable and sustained investment over the course of at least 10 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, the federal government coordinated point-in-time counts in 61 Canadian communities. These counts, all conducted over the course of a few nights during the months of March and April, revealed that 25,216 people were experiencing homelessness. Of those, 20,803 slept in emergency shelters while 4,481 slept on the streets, in cars, or in some other unsuitable place. Reviewing the data for 49 of those 61 communities, this paper examines the impact of community-level conditions on the prevalence of homelessness. The structural determinants of both sheltered and unsheltered homelessness are examined. The analysis shows that more expensive low-quality rental units have a strong positive relationship with the numbers of people staying in homeless shelters. A higher percentage of people in a community living in poverty is also related to increased numbers of people having to make use of homeless shelters. Increases in social assistance income, which undoubtedly improved the well-being of recipients, had no significant relationship with the number of people experiencing homelessness. This latter result is consistent with individuals and families with low income having a small income elasticity of housing demand. For these individuals and families, marginal additions to income are first used to relieve constraints on their budgets for food, utilities, and other necessities rather than being used to finance improvements in housing conditions. The fraction of the population that self-identifies as Indigenous is positively related to both sheltered and unsheltered homelessness, a result consistent with claims of discrimination in housing markets. Finally, a milder climate is associated with higher numbers of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. These results suggest the most effective policy response to addressing homelessness is to lower the cost of shelter, an outcome best achieved by increasing the supply of shelter that can be afforded by individuals and families with limited income. To this end, public policies directed toward reducing the cost of construction, policies that include reviewing density restrictions and land-use regulations and offering tax incentives, can be effective. Preventing the disappearance of single-room occupancy hotels, boarding houses, trailer parks and other forms of housing affordable to people with limited income are other policy responses likely to be associated with decreases in homelessness. Increasing the stock of government-owned housing is another policy option, one best suited for providing housing for people whose homelessness is caused or exacerbated by disability, mental illness, substance abuse or other health issues requiring other support services. Marginal increases in income support, while important for increasing the well-being of individuals and families with limited income, are unlikely to be associated with decreases in homelessness unless they are sufficiently large to significantly reduce rates of poverty in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canadian government is now openly discussing the possibility of making cyberweapons part of its official national defence strategy. The new development was revealed in a recent government white paper, entitled "Strong, Secure, and Engaged" (SSE), which outlined defence policy across a wide range of activities. Specifically, the paper discusses working toward a "more assertive posture in the cyber domain by hardening our defences, and by conducting active cyber operations against potential adversaries in the context of governmentauthorized military missions" with an explicit commitment to developing cyberattack capabilities. This direction not only opens up new possibilities for Canadian defence, it could also represent significant new risks. Without good answers to the difficult questions this new direction could raise, the country could be headed down a very precarious path. Cyberweapons do offer unique benefits. Since they tend to be far less costly to deploy than kinetic weapons - such as missiles, bombs and guns - they can level the playing field between richer, stronger states and weaker, poorer ones. Larger states may even be at further disadvantage by relying on larger, more sophisticated computer systems that could become a liability if successfully attacked. However, to date, countries have been reluctant to deploy cyberweapons in lieu of kinetic weapons. Furthermore, in those cases where cyberweapons appear to have been used by state actors, no state has accepted responsibility for using them. The Stuxnet virus used to cripple Iran's nuclear research equipment is a prime example: Israel and the U.S. remain the primary suspects, but both deny involvement. Cyberweapons also possess risks of unintended consequences that can make the unintended consequences of kinetic weapons seem trivial. Notably, cyberweapons have a much greater potential to impact targets that were not intended by the attacker. For instance, when a virus-like computer weapon is unleashed on the Internet to exploit vulnerabilities in certain system software in a target country, there is a real possibility that the virus could also infect and damage computer systems inside the attacker's own country that use the same software, or even infect the software of allies who use the software. It is also possible that the weapon could have unintended consequences within the target country, by infecting other systems that were never meant to be targeted and causing more collateral damage than expected. Launching a cyberweapon to disable an enemy's supply-chain computer systems and accidentally infecting its nuclear systems, setting off a nuclear incident, is a terrifying scenario. It might even rise to the level of a war crime. It is worth noting, however, that there are no international treaties governing the use of cyberweapons. If Canada engages in cyberwarfare without one, there will be no formal limits on what actions are acceptable and what actions are not. Indeed there are many discussions that still must be had within Canada and beyond to mitigate the risk of pursuing cyberweapons. The mere act of announcing someday that we are developing cyberweaponry (which, to be clear, Canada has not done) will already carry risk, suddenly making Canada suspect in future unattributed attacks, and perhaps enticing other countries to disguise their attacks by routing them through Canada. It is unclear even whether a prime minister or Parliament will be qualified to safely declare cyberwarfare, given its technical complexity. These are just some of the debates we need to have before Canada decides to embark on developing cyberwarfare capabilities. Now is a good time for those debates to start. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving access to domestic and international markets can create large economic benefits. Multimodal infrastructure corridors of road, rail, utilities and communications can improve accessibility by reducing interprovincial and international trade costs. Depending on the geographical area they serve and the modes of transport and types of connections they promote, infrastructure corridors can create trade-offs and synergies between different kinds of economic, social, and environmental outcomes. Yet the implied effects can vary across different regions, population segments and industries. A complete review of a proposed infrastructure corridor package involves a rigorous analysis of all of these potential effects. In this paper, we focus more specifically on quantifying potential gains from reductions in trade costs on Alberta's economy and identify the importance of improved access to lower cost transportation options like rail for select commodities. We find that lowering trade costs substantially increases Alberta's real GDP through its effect on international and interprovincial trade flows. Although interprovincial tariffs on domestic goods are forbidden by the Canadian Constitution, the economic effect of internal non-tariff trade barriers is substantial. Albrecht and Tombe (2016) show that eliminating these interprovincial trade costs would increase Canada's GDP between three to seven per cent. These barriers represent additional costs on Canadian firms and adversely affect their competitiveness in domestic and international markets. High interprovincial trade costs may also pose an additional barrier to entry for foreign firms otherwise willing to enter the Canadian market. As a result of this, Canadian firms end up producing at a less efficient scale and pass the cost of these inefficiencies to consumers. Interprovincial trade costs therefore hurt both producers and consumers. Gains from improved infrastructure are also amplified by the interconnected nature of industries. Output of one industry is often an input for another industry. Shipments cross provincial and national borders as part of these supply-chain relationships which allow for more efficient production but at the same time create additional trade costs on producers. Infrastructure corridors provide one option to lower these trade costs by increasing transportation capacity, creating savings in travel time and distance, creating better quality physical transport infrastructure, simplifying the regulatory and legislative differences across provinces and territories, and improving access to information, to name a few. To quantify the potential effect of increased transportation infrastructure on trade costs, we combine rich data on interprovincial trade flows and shipment-level information on volumes, values, and transportation costs by mode. We empirically estimate the potential for increased rail shipment capacity on shipment costs between various internal trade pairs within Canada. Two key results stand out. First, we find that while distance is an important factor, a higher share of shipments by rail is associated with markedly lower trade costs. Specifically, we find a 10 percentage point increase in the share of value shipped by rail is associated with a 3.2 per cent lower aggregate cost of trade after controlling for commodity, source, and destination of shipments. Second, we also find important differences in the relevance of rail across commodities. We find larger trade costs reductions for coal, mineral products, and fuel oils. The focus on rail is an important one for Alberta since coastal or canal shipping is not a feasible alternative. As a natural next step, we then evaluate the potential gains to Alberta's economy from increased access to internal and international markets that improved infrastructure might provide. We find that lowering trade costs substantially increases Alberta's real GDP through its effect on international and interprovincial trade flows, in both the short run and the long run. The results show that, in the short run, lower trade costs by one per cent increases real GDP by roughly 0.8 per cent and lower trade costs by five per cent increases real GDP by roughly 4.4 per cent. These correspond to approximately $3 billion to $15 billion per year in additional economic activity in Alberta. We find larger gains in the long-run, equivalent to roughly a one per cent increase in real GDP for each one per cent reduction in trade costs. Gains from lower trade costs come primarily through lower cost access to imported inputs and final goods. There are also gains from increased demand by purchases outside Alberta on goods produced by Albertans. This increases real incomes and productivity, which is captured by the increase in real GDP. The combined results of lower import costs and an increase in GDP imply an about six per cent long-run increase in real personal income, equal to an extra $6,423 annually for the median Alberta family. This is a level effect and represents a persistent increase, not a one-time bump. That is, GDP is permanently higher and by extension, annual personal incomes are also permanently higher. Although we don't explore the infrastructure investment options for lowering the trade costs by these levels, the corresponding impacts on real GDP of doing so indicate how high the costs of expanding infrastructure could be while still yielding net benefits to Alberta. An infrastructure corridor could facilitate the expansion of Canada's rail shipment capacity. While many transportation modes could expand within such a corridor -- including roads, pipelines, transmission lines and so on -- our data allow us to specifically quantify the extent to which Alberta's economy could gain from more access to lower cost shipment options like rail. Rail shipment costs are lower than truck transportation when distances are sufficiently long. We find that each one percentage point increase in the share of non-air trade sent by rail is associated with a 0.32 per cent lower trade cost. This implies that if the share shipped by rail increased by 10 percentage points, then trade costs to and from Alberta would, on average, decline by 3.2 per cent. Expanding the rail capacity is particularly valuable for Alberta, since increasing the share of exports shipped by rail by ten 10 percentage points may increase Alberta's GDP by nearly 1.5 per cent in the short-run and over 2.5 per cent in the long-run -- equivalent to over $9 billion per year in economic activity. This is a relatively large increase in economic productivity -- equivalent to roughly $4,500 per household, on average, per year -- and, in addition, it abstracts from other potential sources of gains, such as increased labour migration into the province. The combined increase in GDP and lower import costs from increased rail penetration imply an increase in real personal income. It is more modest here at approximately 3.3 per cent (rather than six per cent), but still very significant and equal to an extra $3,419 annually for the median Alberta family. As before, it is important to note that this is a level effect and represents a persistent increase and permanently higher annual GDP and annual personal incomes. Our analysis is only a first step and explores only one potential effect of expanding infrastructure capacity. Overall, the potential for positive economic effects from multimodal infrastructure corridors is compelling and warrants additional investigation. Governments can play a role by supporting expanded research activities into the feasibility and potential benefits of dedicated multimodal infrastructure corridors in Canada. In addition, though we made progress using detailed shipment-level data, there are shortcomings in coverage and detail that constrain the scope for potential research. Governments should therefore increase the collection and reporting of relevant data on internal trade to facilitate research into the costs producers and consumers face, and the potential gains from internal trade liberalization. Despite the value of expanding research capacity, our analysis points clearly towards the potential gains from internal trade liberalization. Expanded transportation infrastructure capacity can lower trade costs, and therefore governments hoping to expand internal trade should explore means of increasing such capacity, especially the possibility of increased rail shipment capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada has used the same two-factor formula with a 50-50 weighting for the allocation of taxable income between provinces for 61 years. The intra-country formula allocation (FA) was developed when natural resource extraction and manufacturing were more important in economic activity than now. The FA thus may need to be updated to reflect a changing 21st century economy. Canadian provinces set their own tax rates, while most use the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to collect corporate income tax (CIT). This paper examines the differences in the provinces' CIT rates for some recent years, and what might happen if the formula were changed, particularly when companies operating in more than one jurisdiction pay taxes according to varying provincial rates. Businesses operating in more than one jurisdiction accounted for an average share of total revenue of 42 per cent in 2014-2016. In 2011, there were 23,810 such businesses in Canada, making up 2.3 per cent of the total number of businesses and 43.4 per cent of all employees. If a business operates in several provinces, then provincial governments split the taxable corporate income using the FA mechanism. There are 10 rules for the mechanism, depending on specific business sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada's universal health-care system does not include dental care, which presents problems for both low- and middle-income families. According to the latest Statistics Canada data, out-of-pocket dental expenses are increasing steadily. Lower-income workers struggle with a disproportionate share of these costs, leading one in 4.5 Canadians to avoid visits to the dentist. With dental care becoming increasingly unaffordable and private insurance harder to obtain, it's time for Canada to consider bringing dental services into the public health system. Policy solutions have tended to fluctuate between a fill-in-the-gaps approach or comprehensive restructuring of dental care. This paper examines two new options: universal first-dollar coverage or denticare, and public dental insurance for all those without it or denticaid. Denticare would cover dental treatment with the same eligibility for public health insurance under the medicare system. Denticaid would only provide this to children under 12 and those lacking private insurance. Both denticare and denticaid would lower overall health-care costs, as improved oral hygiene would reduce rates of chronic and serious diseases. Integrating dentistry into the public health system would lead to increased patient contact, more efficient early screening and referrals. Direct clinical costs are estimated through micro-costing of expected annual dental services used. Indirect administrative costs are estimated through average costing based on existing per-patient administrative costs in the Canadian health-care system. Co-payments for both options are based on five household income brackets with the lowest bracket being exempt and the highest paying the maximum rate. The co-payment for advanced procedures would be 50 per cent and 20 per cent for all other services. Everyone over age 17 would have to pay an annual premium to be enrolled in the public plan; the lowest income brackets would be exempt and the highest would pay the maximum of $400. In denticare, public employees would no longer receive workplace dental benefits on the private market, while those same benefits would make them ineligible for denticaid. National clinical costs for a hypothetical denticare program in 2019, including administrative costs, are estimated at $27.50 billion ($737.09 per capita) with an upper estimate of $38.40 billion ($1,029.18 per capita) and a low estimate of $15.50 billion ($415.46 per capita). In all three scenarios, premiums paid by eligible individuals would generate $8.93 billion in annual revenues. After factoring in premiums, co-payments and the replacement of existing dental expenditures, the program's net cost would be $6.01 billion in 2019, with an upper estimate of $15.09 billion and a lower estimate of negative $3.82 billion. Denticaid's costs, including administrative costs, would be $15.09 billion ($404.49 per capita) in 2019, with a high scenario of $21.32 billion ($571.34 per capita) and a low scenario of $8.39 billion ($224.98 per capita). Denticaid's premiums would generate less revenue to offset costs. The program's net costs are estimated at $$7.47 billion in 2019, with a high estimate of $12.85 billion and a low estimate of $1.79 billion. There are additional challenges to consider, including dental office staffing levels in rural areas, dentists' operating costs and orthodontic treatments. But none of this should prevent Canada from committing to a denticare program, which out-performs denticaid in terms of efficiency. Both federal and provincial governments would need to be involved in the necessary modifications to the Canada Health Act, with decisions on premiums and co-pays left to individual provinces. After those offsets, the remaining taxbased costs would be a relatively small increase in Canada's public health spending and millions of Canadians would get access to good oral health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals accept additional paid work, in terms of salary increase or more hours, with the expectation they will be financially better off than before. Unfortunately, for recipients of Income Assistance in the province of British Columbia, additional hours of employment or an increase in wages, such as an increase in minimum wage, in some circumstances may actually take money out of their pocket. This is due to the design of Income Assistance and its unintended interactions with other income and social support programs and the tax system. In this paper, we illustrate cases where B.C. residents receiving Disability Assistance or Temporary Assistance (the two main programs that comprise Income Assistance in B.C.) have less after-tax income after working additional hours of employment. In modelling after-tax income for recipients of Disability Assistance and Temporary Assistance as they increase their hours of paid work, we detail when and how additional income earned from paid work affects not only their income assistance levels, but also their eligibility and receipt of some general and health-related supplemental benefits. We show that, as Income Assistance recipients allocate more hours to paid work, the reductions in total after-tax income can be sizable. For example, if a single person receiving Disability Assistance (earning a wage of approximately $15 per hour) increases his or her paid work hours from 16 hours a week to 35 hours a week, it reduces his or her total after-tax income by $1,500 a year. This loss is not just limited to a decline in after-tax income. Access to some general and health-related supplemental benefits provided to Income Assistance recipients may also be lost from working these additional hours.1 By addressing these program-design elements of the current Income Assistance program, the B.C. government can improve the well-being of those receiving Income Assistance. Reforms may also decrease expenditures on Income Assistance in the long-run. Allowing recipients to increase their hours of work or earnings within the year, as their situation permits, without the risk of having their benefits reduced, may actually help more people transition from Income Assistance towards permanent employment, thus breaking the cycle of poverty and increasing social inclusion. Many recipients of Income Assistance already face numerous barriers to paid work, other than those analyzed here, as the result of disability-related employment constraints. After-tax income reductions like those described here create another barrier to employment for these populations that the B.C. government can and should address. Canada's commitment to improving social inclusion for specific populations, such as persons with disabilities, heighten the importance of identifying inequalities and poverty traps within our income assistance system. Institutional barriers to inclusive activities such as employment must be removed to meet these commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who bears the burden, or incidence, of the corporate income tax (CIT)? This is an important, if not somewhat contentious, policy issue. In this paper we provide a discussion of the existing research on the question, viewing it through a Canadian policy lens. We also use some new results from a companion technical paper, which undertakes one of the few empirical investigations of the issue using Canadian data, to discuss the implications of increases in corporate taxes for wages in Canadian provinces. While it is clear that people, not corporate entities, ultimately bear the burden of corporate taxes, a key question is which people? The answer to this question has important implications for the equity, or fairness, of the tax system. Much of the recent focus in policy discussions concerns the allocation of the burden of the CIT between owners of capital and labour. Since income from capital tends to be concentrated with wealthier individuals, if the burden of the CIT falls mostly on the owners of capital, it increases the progressivity of the tax system. On the other hand, if the tax is borne mostly by labour through lower wages, the CIT is less progressive. Much of the research into the incidence of the CIT has employed theoretical simulation models. Early models of this type, which were based on a closed economy with fixed supplies of labour and capital, suggested that most of the burden of the CIT would be borne by the owners of capital throughout the economy, and not just the shareholders of firms in the corporate sector. Subsequent extensions of those models into a small open economy setting, where capital and goods are highly mobile between jurisdictions (countries, provinces), predict that most of the burden of the CIT will be borne by other inputs that are relatively inelastic in supply, such as labour. These small open economy models are particularly relevant for Canada. Viewing the results of these models through a Canadian lens, we conclude that there is good reason to expect that much of the burden of corporate taxes in Canada, particularly those levied by provincial governments, will fall on labour through lower wages. While useful, the predictions of these simulation models should be viewed with caution, largely because of the sensitivity of the results to the underlying assumptions. A nascent empirical literature has emerged that provides econometric-based estimates of the distribution of the burden of corporate taxes. While this research is relatively new, our reading is that the evidence is mounting that corporate taxes are indeed borne to a significant extent by labour through lower wages. However, there is very little empirical work done in an explicitly Canadian context. In a companion technical paper we employ Canadian data to examine the impact of provincial corporate taxes on wages. Our results suggest that, consistent with the predictions of the open economy simulation models, provincial corporate taxes adversely affect the capital/labour ratio, which lowers the productivity of labour which, in turn, lowers wages. Accounting for the shrinkage in the corporate tax base in response to an increase in the tax rate, we calculate that for every $1 in extra tax revenue generated by an increase in the provincial CIT rate, the associated long-run decrease in aggregate wages ranges from $1.52 for Alberta to $3.85 for Prince Edward Island. Applying our estimates to the recent 2 percentage point increase in the CIT rate in Alberta we calculate that labour earnings for an average two-earner household will decline by the equivalent of approximately $830 per year, which amounts to a $1.12 billion reduction in aggregate labour earnings for the province. By way of comparison, other research has estimated the impact of the recently imposed carbon tax in Alberta -- the subject of considerable scrutiny -- to be approximately $525 per household. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether it's a big city or a small town, all Canadian municipalities have core issues that their elected politicians are concerned about. Regardless of size, the daily business of a municipality must be managed and policies determined about such bread-and-butter issues as garbage collection, snow removal, wastewater and sewage, fire protection, economic development and fixing potholes. However, when size increases, so do the layers of issues that engage municipal politicians. This paper examines the results of a cross-Canada survey of more than 1,000 mayors and councillors from communities ranging in population size from 5,000 to more than two million. With an increase in population size, the numbers and complexity of issues creep up as well. Tiny municipalities typically aren't concerned with issues such as immigrant settlement, homelessness and public transit. Those issues are much more pressing for larger municipalities. A focus on some types of issues, such as public transit, grows right alongside population growth. The physical size of large municipalities means they contain a population whose needs are naturally more diverse than they are in smaller cities, towns and villages, thus shifting politicians' concerns to such things as homelessness and climate change. However, issues such as relations with Indigenous people and climate change also tend to hold regional, not just municipal, importance. They may be extremely important to a small municipality because of its geographic location and less important in a larger municipality located elsewhere. For example, municipal politicians in British Columbia reflect regional concerns with their emphasis in the survey on the importance of tackling homelessness, affordable housing, climate change and Indigenous relations. Yet, next door in Alberta, Indigenous relations and climate change ranked in the survey as being of low importance, along with climate change, despite the presence of two cities in the province with populations hovering around the million mark. The number one issue for municipalities regardless of size is economic development, since job creation and attracting investment are key for a healthy municipality regardless of its location or size. And nearly every politician surveyed listed planning, water supply and transportation infrastructure (roads, highways and bridges) as being of deep importance to their communities. Of almost equal importance in the survey were a second slate of issues including emergency planning, parks and recreation, public health, solid waste removal and policing. The results of this survey are intended to lay the groundwork for future researchers who want to focus on specific problems in the area of urban policy-making. Those who want to study the bread-and-butter issues can do so among a wide range and size of municipalities, knowing that these issues are vital to all. Those with an interest in homelessness and immigrant populations can focus on the big cities while being assured they are not missing out on key points among smaller communities. This survey will be highly beneficial for researchers in urban policy issues as it will help them to decide where to look and exactly what to look for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses and describes measures of poverty and, on the basis of that discussion, proposes a public policy response that more closely and more easily targets income support to where it is most needed and most effective. Our review of poverty measures shows there are many holes that prevent advocates and policy-makers from obtaining a clear picture of who is in poverty and the depth of that poverty. The Market Basket Measure is the most finely tuned to identifying where impoverished families live and that is in large part why it was recently adopted by the federal government to gauge its anti-poverty policies. The government of Alberta, on the other hand, evaluates its policies using a measure of poverty that allows no consideration that costs of living might vary by community. Social assistance is the main policy instrument through which the federal and provincial governments provide assistance to people in need. We show that the growing emphasis of increasing social-assistance support via child benefits provides no increase in support in what has been for some time the majority of social-assistance cases. What's more, despite a great deal of evidence that the cost of meeting basic needs varies widely by community, the amount of assistance provided is the same regardless of where one lives in the province. We propose a modification to how social assistance is provided that makes allowances for the fact poverty is deeper in some parts of the province than others and that provides support to individuals and families whether or not they have children. Our proposal is superior to rent control as a means of dealing with falling housing affordability, removes barriers to people receiving social assistance from moving to seek employment, and has features similar to a guaranteed basic income. It is also inexpensive. We estimate the cost of our proposal to be equivalent to less than one per cent of the provincial health-care budget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Canada, approximately $27 billion is spent annually to fund services that deal with homelessness, including the related issues of poverty, mental illness, addiction, domestic violence, poor health and childhood trauma. Another $6.5 billion annually is spent on social assistance programs, health care, and the police and justice systems when their roles intersect with homelessness. Thus, $33.5 billion is spent each year on an array of 167,000 fragmented services provided by both government and nonprofit organizations across the country. Ontario alone has some 60,000 social and community services in operation, while Alberta has 20,000. There must be a better, more cost-effective way to achieve results through co-ordinating this confusing jumble of services. Integrating services for cost-effectiveness and streamlining to clients must be done properly or it risks simply adding more layers of bureaucracy. When considering how best to integrate and consolidate services, the focus must remain on the clients and not on the systems involved. Nor does integration necessarily equate to more positive outcomes. Integration should not be considered a cure-all for what ails the system; rather, it would be more realistic to take a transformative and deliberate approach to collaboration and change. This paper examines methods and proposes tenets by which services can be integrated, yet still deliver efficient and effective assistance to homeless Canadians. Moving towards integration entails examination of the primary objective, the systems involved, the target population of clients, development of an integration strategy and activities, a timeline, a list of participant organizations, regional scope and client impact, to name a few of the variables. The idea is to develop mechanisms to share, link and leverage the various stakeholders' realms more strategically. The work requires co-operation and co-ordination among organizations that may have different commitments and thinking, with the aim of creating mutual trust and effective relationships. The best way to think about integration is to picture a network and nodes of activity, interests, people and resources as being parts of all the systems that provide services to the homeless. The key then is to focus on which nodes offer clients the best outcomes. These nodes include social services, education, justice, housing, health, children's services and income supports. The cost to end homelessness has been estimated at $3.8 billion a year. Unfortunately, no clear line of sight exists between the $33.5 billion annual investment and the current client and population outcomes. The array of resources needs to be sorted out and integrated where deemed beneficial, to create maximum impact and value for Canadians. Amalgamation may be the answer in some cases, but so too may be the shutting down of some services whose roles are blurry or poorly defined. In the end, integration will not be about cutting back on funding, but rather using the existing funding more wisely, strategically and transparently. Integration is so much more than piecemeal strategies aimed at repairing a broken system; it is a full-scale transformation of that system. The work needs to begin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teen violence in dating and peer relationships has huge costs to society in numerous areas including health care, social services, the workforce and the justice system. Physical, psychological, and sexual abuse have long-lasting ramifications for the perpetrators as well as the victims, and for the families involved on both sides of that equation. An effective violence prevention program that is part of a school's curriculum is beneficial not only for teaching teenagers what is appropriate behaviour in a relationship, but also for helping them break the cycle of violence which may have begun at home with their own maltreatment as children. The Fourth R program is an efficacious violence prevention program that was developed in Ontario and has been implemented in schools throughout Canada and the U.S. Covering relationship dynamics common to dating violence as well as substance abuse, peer violence and unsafe sex, the program can be adapted to different cultures and to same-sex relationships. The program, which gets its name from the traditional 3Rs -- reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic -- offers schools the opportunity to provide effective programming for teens to reduce the likelihood of them using relationship for violence as they move into adulthood. The federal government has estimated that the societal costs of relationship violence amount to more than $7 billion. These costs can continue to be incurred through the legal and health-care systems as the ripple effects of violence play out over the years, even after a relationship has ended. Other types of violence are also costly to society and not just in terms of dollars, but in young lives diverted into criminal activity. Up to 15 per cent of youth who become involved with the justice system grow into serious adult offenders who develop lengthy criminal careers. Yet, research shows that if prevention programs such as the Fourth R can deter just one 14-year-old high-risk juvenile from a life of crime, up to $5 million can be saved in costs to society. Research involving 1,700 Grade 9 students in 20 schools showed that those who did not take the Fourth R programming had a rate of relationship violence 2.5 times greater than those who did, and that the program had the greatest impact on boys, who are the most frequent perpetrators. There was also a significant reduction in violence towards peers, especially for youth who were at risk to be violent because they had experienced previous child abuse. Students likewise became more aware of violence and its impacts on others, and they gained a greater command of coping strategies. The program's start-up costs vary depending on the school's geographical location. This paper shows that the program's costs per student are small compared to the savings to society in terms of violence avoidance. In a large Ontario school board, costs were down to $5 per student. In the Northwest Territories, smaller class sizes and bigger geographic distances make implementing the program more expensive, but still only $15-33 per student. The authors calculated savings based on costs avoided related to dating and peer violence at $2,101 per student. Violence prevention is an ethical imperative and it must start with teenagers. In an era of fiscal restraint and demand for more financial accountability, the Fourth R has proven to be a pro-active success in terms of saving both public money and young lives from the deleterious effects of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All Canadian cities face fiscal and governance problems unique to their individual sizes, economies, housing situations and population demographics. This paper examines how mid-sized cities, with populations between 300,000 and two million, can strive to innovate, to act autonomously and to implement complex policies and programs within larger constraints -- capabilities of which other levels of government need to be more cognizant. Yet, while provincial and federal regulations would seem to often block mid-sized cities' capabilities for policy-making, they also offer a solid basis from which to operate. Property taxes provide stable revenue sources while constraints on borrowing mean protection for cities' credit ratings along with access to capital markets. The challenge is forging a workable balance between constraint from without and a move toward autonomy from within. Municipal governments in Canada typically maintain balanced budgets, but they are also subject to restraints on transfer payments imposed by their provincial governments. How the cities then allocate that money is determined by various factors. These include whether they have large populations of immigrants or the elderly to serve, the basis for the local economy -- such as whether it is fuelled by resources, manufacturing or service industries -- the degree of homelessness, relationships with public-sector unions, and the costs of compliance to federal standards for such things as wastewater. Unfunded liabilities may also put pressure on a city's payroll and create an actuarial deficit for its pension plans, resulting in tighter provincial scrutiny. A city's fiscal health can be assessed by the ways in which it meets the basic criteria of sustainability, flexibility and vulnerability. Sustainability measures how well a municipality maintains its financial obligations to creditors and the public via the services it provides. Flexibility entails how much it can increase its levels of debt and taxes, while vulnerability reflects the way the city is affected by provincial limits on transfer payments and outside factors beyond its control that influence its economy. Cities do have room to innovate within their provincial and economic constraints, however. They can move away from their reliance on property tax revenue by shifting to alternatives such as a greater reliance on user fees or they can piggy-back on taxes imposed by other levels of government where these are permitted. Many of these options have yet to be explored. Ironically, while the municipal level of government is viewed as being at the bottom of the hierarchy of governments, many city governments are larger, more innovative and more versatile than the provincial governments that oversee them. Municipal officials have as much expertise in policy-making as do their provincial counterparts. In fact, own-source revenues, such as user fees, licensing and investments in many large cities amount to 90 per cent of operating monies, making those cities less dependent upon which way the provincial wind is blowing when it comes to transfer payments. They thus have more room to innovate and to develop programs specific to their demographics and to the area's economic health. It falls upon provincial and federal governments to recognize what municipalities are capable of achieving, and to make appropriate legislative and regulatory changes that will permit more innovation and policy-making locally. Loosening the constraints under which cities operate will create the environment for further improvement and innovation in Canada's municipal governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With its 2016 budget, the Government of Alberta laid out the basic details of the carbon tax rebate. The rebate is constructed to increase based on household size, and will decrease with income after a pre-set cutoff. The government has stated six in 10 households will be eligible for a full rebate, with an additional six per cent receiving a partial rebate. This paper examines the income distribution of Albertans, to determine how the rebate and income cutoffs affect different types of Alberta families. Using easily available data from Statistics Canada, we shed light on the question of who will receive a carbon-tax rebate. Based on 2013 data on median incomes, single-parent families, elderly families and single Albertans are all groups where a majority of households will receive rebates. In some cases, it appears well over 50 per cent of those groups will receive a full rebate. However, fewer than 50 per cent of Alberta families that are couples (with and without children) will receive a rebate. Still, even those that get a rebate will not necessarily exactly break even against the additional costs they incur from a carbon tax. Interestingly, the lowest-income households, which are most likely to qualify for a rebate, appear to be in a position where they will receive a larger refund than they will pay in carbon taxes. For households where incomes fall in the middle of the provincial distribution, the data suggest that the rebate will come close to compensating for additional costs of the carbon tax, although it may fall slightly short. The analysis presented below is a first pass at a very important question facing Albertans. When data from the 2016 census becomes available, we will be much better able to evaluate which Albertans will be eligible for the rebate. The census will enable a more precise evaluation of whether the rebate matches the government's 66 per cent goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All the excitement around the great possibilities that the opening of the Northwest Passage could offer the shipping industry -- and Canada -- could not last. Just a few years ago, as sea ice in the North seemed to be steadily melting away, observers were eagerly tallying up the savings in time, fuel and costs that a reliably ice-free route across the top of the planet would provide for shippers. A couple of trial runs only confirmed that for shipments from Asia to Europe or North America, or the other way around, the route could shave thousands of kilometres off each trip, compared to journeys through the Suez or Panama canals. Rapid growth in shipping traffic across the Northwest Passage and its sister route, the Northern Sea Route, seemed not just inevitable, but imminent. Just a short while later, it now seems neither imminent nor inevitable. The retreat in sea ice may persist, but it is evident that due to regular fluctuations in ice coverage, the Northwest Passage will not be reliably ice-free for many, many years, if ever. Shipping may be more possible through the Northwest Passage than it was in the past, but it will not be consistently unobstructed. The challenges of ice combined with Arctic weather conditions may well mean that any shipping through the passage is slower than expected. Other complicating factors include uncharted or poorly charted sea lanes and the difficulty in securing insurance for Arctic shipping. At the same time, the competition from alternate routes is only becoming more intense, with expansions in both the Suez and Panama Canals and the potential for a new canal across Nicaragua. Regarding the Northwest Passage, Canada lacks much of the infrastructure in the North that would make Arctic passage a strong competitor, including multiple ports enroute and sufficient icebreaking equipment. There are still advantages that might draw some shipping away from traditional routes to the northern passages, particularly for the movement of western resources to growing Asian markets. But even moderate levels of shipping through the Northwest Passage do have the potential to change Canada's relationship with its Asian trading partners, especially China. The Canadian and Chinese governments share a number of priorities regarding the Arctic, including environmental protection, safer navigation and resource development. These will provide opportunities for more dialogue and engagement between the two countries. While the Northwest Passage may not become the important trans-shipment route to Asia once imagined by enthusiastic observers, the most meaningful impact that a more useful route may provide is to alter, and improve, the course of Canada's relations in the Asia-Pacific region. This paper seeks to examine likely developments and trends in Arctic shipping given the shrinkage of the polar ice cap, and to situate these trends in the broader context of changing global maritime and trade realities with particular focus on their impact on trade with Asia. There are implications for Canada and its relations with Asia, especially China, that flow from these developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]