Reforming the Expenditure Budget Process: The Canadian Experience

During the past twenty years the government of Canada has introduced three distinct approaches to managing its expenditure budget. The approaches were all introduced with considerable fanfare and also with the promise that they would enable the government to finally get a firm handle on its expenditure budget.
This paper looks at the three approaches and outlines their most important features. The paper also presents the reasons that led to the downfall of both the Program Planning Budgeting System (PPBS) and the Policy and Expenditure Management System (PEMS). The paper goes on to argue that the recently introduced approach—labeled the Expenditure Review Committee (ERC)—is also unlikely to meet expectations. It also provides an historical context for understanding why each particular approach was adopted.     

教育的终极价值即启迪人们寻找自由

自有人类社会便有教育。教育活动发展到现在,我们在探索其意义时就不能仅仅局限于考察其对于个体知识增长的多寡和对于国家贡献的大小,而应该从深层次挖掘体味其终极价值,即康德所说的:教育就是通过强制来实现自由。     

Why Human Rights Matter for Our Future: The Views of Three Young People

This article consists of statements by three young people with a passion for human rights. Two of the young people, Jude Smith (aged thirteen) and Khalil Richard (aged twenty) are members of the Sheffield Youth Cabinet. The third young person, Natasha Siguake (aged twenty), is a Young Advisor for Sheffield Futures. The three contributors talk about the human rights that are most important to them and why human rights are important for the future.     

Non-governmental Organizations and Governmentality: 'Consuming' Biodiversity and Indigenous People in the Philippines

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are playing an increasingly important role in the process Foucault called 'governmentality'. Drawing on the Foucauldian literature, this paper uses a case study of biodiversity conservation as well as indigenous people's ancestral domain in the Philippines to show how two quite different NGO-led conservation agendas nonetheless share a common underlying purpose: persuading indigenous people to internalize state control through self-regulation. Ironically, it is this sort of NGO contribution to the elaboration of government (in the Foucauldian sense) that may turn out be the most significant and lasting contribution that NGOs make to social change.     

西方核心价值构建经验及对我国的启示

随着改革开放的逐步深入,国内利益格局不断变化,利益矛盾日益突出,我国社会主义核心价值观传统构建途径面临着四方面问题。西方资本主义国家在核心价值观念构建中形成的保障法制化、主体多元化以及手段内隐化等三方面经验,对我国建设社会主义核心价值观具有重要启示。     

Government Deficit and Debt: Learning from the Canadian Experience

A Government Reinvented: A Study of Alberta's Deficit Elimination Program C BRUCE, R KNEEBONE and K McKENZIE (eds) The Trojan Horse: Alberta and the Future of Canada G LAXER and T HARRISON (eds) Unnecessary Debts L OSBERG and P FORTIN (eds) Deficit Reduction: What Pain, What Gain? B ROBSON and W SCARTH (eds)     

Dealing with unfinished Indigenous business: The need for historical reflection

The commitment by both major political parties to the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission symbolises profound problems that continue to bedevil movement towards meaningful reconciliation in Australia.
Unlike Australia, long-established treaties in Canada, the United States and New Zealand as well as greater theoretical clarity in identifying the process of colonization and its ill-effects on Indigenous peoples have provided stronger foundations for policy and more positive outcomes.
This article provides a theoretical framework for understanding the effects of colonisation in Australia, and policy prerequisites for redressing its damaging effects. These include a treaty, improved economic resources and stronger political, intellectual and property rights.     

我党开展学习活动的基本经验

重视学习、善于学习是我党的优良传统、政治优势和鲜明特点,我党在不断推进学习活动中积累的宝贵历史经验是:紧密结合党的中心工作,为实现党的历史任务服务,是开展学习活动的根本目的;坚持以马克思主义中国化的最新理论成果武装全党,是开展学习活动的永恒主题;始终保持和发展党的先进性,是开展学习活动的重大任务;采取科学的方法是推进学习活动不断深入的有效途径;发挥领导干部的带头作用,使学习经常化、制度化,是推进学习活动取得实效的重要保障。     

Carbon Taxation and Policy Labeling: Experience from American States and Canadian Provinces

A vast economics literature embraces taxation of the carbon content of fossil fuels as the superior policy approach for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, experience around the world suggests that carbon taxes face exceedingly difficult political hurdles. Federal experience in the United States and in Canada confirms this pattern. This article reviews sub‐federal policy development among American states and Canadian provinces, a great many of which have pursued climate policy development. With one major exception, explicit carbon taxation appears to remain a political nonstarter. At the same time, states and provinces have been placing indirect carbon prices on fossil fuel use through a wide range of policies. These tend to strategically alter labeling, avoiding the terms of “tax” and “carbon” in imposing costs. The article offers a framework for considering such strategies and examines common design features, including direct linkage between cost imposition and fund usage to build political support.     

National Policy‐Making in Indigenous Affairs: Blueprint for an Indigenous Review Council

This article examines the dearth of any representative Indigenous role in national Indigenous affairs policy‐making and suggests a remedy. After making the case for a specific Indigenous place in national policy‐making, the article considers the reasons for the failure of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), the body that filled this brief for a decade and a half. The article then considers three possible ways of ensuring an Indigenous role in the policy‐making process: a replacement for ATSIC with specific policy powers; set seats for Indigenous representatives in federal parliament; and the creation of a new elected body whose role would be to review Indigenous affairs legislation. The article concludes that the latter proposal in particular is worth trialling as it would ensure a significant Indigenous voice in national policy‐making while learning from the mistakes that led to ATSIC's demise.     

Current practices for procuring affordable housing: The Canadian context

Abstract

This article describes the current housing system in Canada, focusing particularly on the various mechanisms still available for providing affordable housing. Beginning with an overview of the Canadian housing system, it provides a brief history of Canadian housing policy and program initiatives instrumental in developing the inventory of affordable housing available today.

Current practices and procedures in private lending for affordable housing are highlighted. A discussion of current initiatives available to provide affordable housing follows, with a focus on the role of government, the third sector, and new partnership arrangements implemented to encourage more affordable housing. The conclusion highlights recent changes, the current state of the affordable housing sector, and the impact these changes may have on low‐ and moderate‐income households in Canada.     

Indigenous rights in El Salvador: Prospects for change

Conclusion In 1996, the National Association of Salvadoran Indians participated in a UN-sponsored conference on the development of forest resources. Their involvement in the conference highlighted the growing international presence of Salvadoran indigenous organizations. Unfortunately, there is also very limited information available on these groups. As some have commented: The Salvadoran Indians … are an invisible or ghostly presence in the country: cautious in their public presence as an ethnic community, officially non-existent—yet still recognised by neighbours, local municipal governments and, most importantly, by themselves as indios. As the country becomes more accessible to researchers and as indigenous Salvadorans gain a stronger foothold in the international forum, it is very likely indigneous peoples will emerge from the historical shadows to forcefully claim their rights as distinct members of Salvadoran society. The obstacles they face are not inconsequential. State opposition to indigenous organizations is strong and popular perceptions are often harder to dislodge than state policies. The widespread support gained by organizations like ANIS during the civil war proves that there is sympathy for indigenous rights. It remains to be seen to what extent ANIS and other organizations can use this support, and that of indigenous allies around the world, to promote the goals and aspirations of indigenous Salvadorans. While the issue of indigenous rights has long been discussed in other countries, it is only beginning to be addressed in El Salvador.     

Contracting for Indigenous Health Care: Towards Mutual Accountability

In Australia and other industrialised countries, governments contract with the non‐government sector for the provision of primary health care to indigenous peoples. Australian governments have developed policies and funding programs to support this health sector, but the current arrangements are unduly complex and fragmented. The results of our study show that the complex contractual environment for Aboriginal Community‐Controlled Health Services (ACCHSs) and their funders is an unintended but inevitable result of a quasi‐classical approach to contracts applied by multiple funders. The analysis in this article highlights potential policy and program changes that could improve the effectiveness of funding and accountability arrangements, based on the use of an alliance contracting model, better performance indicators and greater clarity in the relative roles of national and jurisdictional governments.     

Healthy Country, Healthy People: Policy Implications of Links between Indigenous Human Health and Environmental Condition in Tropical Australia

Investment in programs that help Indigenous people undertake work maintaining the environmental health of their country has benefits for the environment as well as the physical, mental and cultural health of the Indigenous people involved. For health these findings have direct implications for some national health policies, service provision to homelands, health promotion and Indigenous health research. There are also direct implications for environmental investment in northern Australia and the design and regulation of markets in resource entitlements. Indirectly the findings should be important for economic, employment and education policies as well as those promoting social harmony. Given the range of benefits there is a strong argument for cross-agency investment in working on country by Indigenous people.     

Purchasing Policy Advice: The Limits to Contracting Out

Throughout the OECD, governments have been contracting out an increasing range of goods and services. Against this background, this article outlines the case for, and assesses the merits of, placing the purchase of governmental policy advice on a more competitive basis. Two options are given particular attention: first, the creation of an internal market for policy advice within the public sector under which departments and other government agencies would tender to supply specific policy outputs; and second, a more radical option under which public and private sector organizations would compete for the contracts to supply governmental policy advice. Drawing on the insights of the new institutional economics, it is argued that neither option is likely to enhance the efficiency or effectiveness with which policy advice is produced, whether under conditions of short-term or long-term contracting. This is due to the likelihood of: only partial contestability (due, among other things, to asset specificity in the form of transaction-specific expertise and trust); a greater risk of opportunistic behavior by the suppliers of advice (and also, under some conditions, by the purchasers); higher agency costs and transaction costs; and greater problems with respect to horizontal and vertical policy coordination. Such considerations suggest that the widespread reliance of governments on relatively permanent advisory institutions and in-house expertise can be explained and justified on the same theoretical grounds that have prompted the contracting out of other publicly-funded goods and services.