Search

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the Quebec pulp and paper industry fell by more than 30 percent from 1990 to 2006. We use an energy demand model to analyze the contributions to this decrease of energy prices, product mix, technological change, and biomass use. The product mix is made of pulp, and cardboard, and paper. Pulp is an intermediate product for the industry, but not necessarily so for mills; vertical integration varies across mills and presents different opportunities to transfer heat between stages of production. Chemical and mechanical pulping processes are used to form two groups of pulp and paper mills. We find that changes of product mixes contributed the most to reduce GHG emissions, followed to a lesser extent by increases of fuel prices relative to electricity. The estimated electricity and fuel price elasticities are low. However it is still possible to significantly reduce GHG emissions by substituting natural gas for heavy fuel oil; such a substitution could be brought about by a small change of their relative price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nature of the differences in the wage gap between Canadian born males and immigrant males in Quebec and in the rest of Canada (ROC) over the period 1980-2000. Relative to Canadian born individuals, immigrants in the ROC have been consistently, and increasingly, faring better in terms of wages than immigrants in Quebec. We cannot conclude that this is a consequence of Quebec having different immigration policies than the ROC, as the wage gap would be even larger if Quebec attracted the same immigrants as the ROC, nor can we conclude that immigrants are more discriminated against in Quebec. We find that the increased differential in the Quebec-ROC immigrant wage gap mostly reflects changes in the premium earned by immigrants who become citizens over those who remain landed immigrants; this premium virtually disappeared in Quebec while remaining stable in the ROC over the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Self-reported life satisfaction is increasingly measured in government and private surveys around the world. In Canada, life satisfaction questions have not been asked in a consistent manner over time, but the accumulated set of data since 1985, along with recent surveys with repeated structure, now facilitates an analysis of regional changes. Those two and a half decades reveal a significant increase in life satisfaction in the province of Quebec as compared with the rest of Canada. The scale of this increase in well-being is comparable to the imputed effect of more than a trebling of mean household income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a variant of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method, I find that outside Quebec, in both public and private sectors, the wage premium enjoyed by anglophones between 1970 and 2000 can be fully explained by a higher relative demand for English skills. However, I find that in Quebec's public sector between 1970 and 2000, francophones enjoyed a wage premium that may have reflected more than a higher relative demand for French skills, opening the possibility of discrimination as a factor. Such a premium also seems to have been present in Quebec's private sector in 2000. In particular, as was the case in 1970 for francophones, in 2000 anglophones in Quebec's private sector could not gain access to the market premium for the other language group by becoming bilingual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the variation in effective tax rates for R&D in Canada's ten provinces. It is shown that while a sizable tax subsidy for R&D exists in every province, the variation across provinces is significant, ranging from an effective subsidy rate of about 40 percent in Alberta to over 200 percent in Quebec. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Un des principaux objectifs de la réforme de la loi sur la faillite, au Canada, en 1992, était d'accroître le nombre de propositions de réorganisation de compagnies commerciales. Cet article a pour but d'analyser le nombre de propositions de réorganisation déposéés par des compagnies de Toronto et de Montréal, avant et après la réforme de la loi sur la faillite, afin de déterminer si cette réforme a produit les effets escomptés. En considérant une variété de facteurs macroéconomiques et politiques qui influencent aussi le nombre de propositions de réorganisation, nous constatons que la réforme de la loi sur la faillite a considérablement accru le nombre de propositions de réorganisation déposées par des sociétés de Toronto et de Montreal. One of the major aims of the 1992 reform to bankruptcy law in Canada was to increase the number of commercial reorganization proposals. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the number of reorganization proposals filed by companies in Toronto and Montreal before and after bankruptcy reform to see whether the reform has had its intended effect. Controlling for a variety of macroeconomic and policy factors that also influence the number of reorganization proposals, we find that bankruptcy reform has significantly increased the number of corporate reorganization proposals filed in Toronto and Montreal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Given its unique demographic situation, and its desire to be in control of its own destiny, Quebec has evolved family policies that differ considerably from those of the rest of Canada. Quebec's tradition of civil law, in contrast to common law in the rest of the country, has meant that there was already a tradition of alternative forms of marriage in Quebec. The extent of cohabitation, along with the greater policy attention to family questions, has brought about a more Nordic model there in contrast to a more liberal model in the rest of the country. Attitudes differ considerably between Quebec and other provinces in terms of child-care (since 1997) and parental leave (since 2006). The Nordic model has helped Quebec to avoid particularly low fertility. Its child-care policy has been designed both to improve child welfare and to enhance women's opportunities in employment. Comparisons to other provinces indicate that women's paid work has benefited, but child development indicators are less positive. It may be that universal programs do not permit as much focus on disadvantaged children, where early intervention has a larger impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1997 Quebec adopted a policy providing universal pre-school daycare for five dollars per day. Comparing Quebec to the rest of Canada, we use the 1996, 2001, and 2006 Canadian censuses to determine the impact of this policy on couples' strategies for combining employment and child care. As well as increasing female labour force participation, the policy reduced the number of families with a traditional division of labour, showing greater effects on common-law than on married couples. These effects, however, are considerably smaller than are differences related to the two parents' human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Author-supplied Abstracts.)

Knowledge of an additional language may be associated with enhanced earnings because of its actual value in the workplace, or its value as a screen for ability. Previously available data did not indicate whether bilingualism was actually practiced. The 2001 Census reports, for the first time, the primary and secondary languages used at work. Conditioning on both language knowledge and language use determines the additional earnings that can be attributed to the use of a second official language. We find substantial, statistically significant, rewards to second official language use in Quebec and insignificant effects in the Rest-of-Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]