The Policy Brief is a digital publication, written by JSGS scholars and leading policy experts, to provide context and perspective on important public issues and to further discussion and debate within the public sector. It provides policy makers and those interested in policy formation with timely and expert analysis, observations and potential policy approaches to relevant issues concerning the public.
If you have a subject idea that is current, topical and relevant to the public policy debate, and are interested in authoring a brief, please contact the Policy Brief editor, Dale Eisler.
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There is a chasm of disagreement separating climate-concerned policy makers in Ottawa and supporters of the oil and gas sector on the prairies. Each side behaves like they’re playing a zero-sum game.
One of the most challenging and divisive public policy issues in Canada is the federal government's Equalization program. It seeks to ensure provinces have the fiscal capacity to deliver programs to their citizens on a roughly comparable basis. The formula to determine what provinces qualify to receive federal Equalization payments is by its nature a source of controversy. Recently Newfoundland and Labrador launched the latest court challenge to Equalization. In this Policy Paper for the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy (JSGS), Louis Levesque, considered one of Canada's leading experts on Equalization, does a deep dive into the economic and regional considerations that lie at the heart of the issue.
Our policies both foreign and domestic are indeed taking place in turbulent times. If there ever really was, there is certainly no real divide now possible between the policies that happen at home, and those that take place beyond our borders.
In August 2023, the Saskatchewan government enacted a policy pursuant to the Education Act. Titled "Use of Preferred First Name and Pronouns by Students," the policy requires schools to obtain parental consent for students under 16 before using their chosen name, gender identity, or gender expression.
There is no escaping today’s reality: more and more the challenges of democracy are in the headlines. It is evident around the world, whether in the presidential campaign unfolding in the U.S., in the unrest evidenced in the wake of Venezuela’s recent election, or in the rise of populist authoritarian figures across Europe, and elsewhere. Long considered the bedrock of western society, democracy itself is now often being questioned.
In 1996, Harvard University professor Robert Putnam gave the annual Manion Lecture in Ottawa, sponsored by the Canadian Centre for Management Development. The title of his address was The Decline of Civil Society: How Come? So What? It was four years before the release of Putnam’s book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, a seminal work that to this day remains a defining and insightful analysis on the decline of civil society in the United States.
